Factors affecting users’ online privacy literacy among students in Israel

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the attitudes and influential factors of users’ knowledge and use of the tools designated for controlling and enhancing online privacy, which are referred to as online privacy literacy (OPL). Particularly, inspired by the protection motivation theory, a motivational factor is defined as comprising several variables which reflect users’ motivation to protect their online privacy.

To this end, a user study was conducted based on the quantitative method with the participation of 169 students from the Israeli academia who were administered closed-ended questionnaires.

Generally low to moderate levels of OPL were obtained. Interestingly, the multivariate linear regression analysis showed that motivational factors, such as users’ concern for personal information protection on the internet and users’ privacy self-efficacy and sense of anonymity when visiting a website, were among the strongest predictive factors of users’ OPL level.

This research has social implications that might contribute to an increase in the OPL among internet users.

The direct influence of the examined factors on users’ OPL was not previously discussed in the literature. As a result of the study, a comprehensive model of user online privacy behavior was constructed.