DescriptionIndividuals often demonstrate privacy behaviors that are contrary to their concerns about information sharing and use. Literature has termed this phenomenon the “privacy paradox.” In this dissertation we seek to bridge the gap between information privacy concerns and demonstrated disclosure behavior using social interventions. We examined the essential elements of privacy concerns, information disclosure, social influence, privacy interventions, and individual interactions with interventions to study their complex relationships and the daily information disclosure challenges faced by individuals. The major purposes of this dissertation are to revisit the privacy paradox phenomenon, examine the relationships among privacy concerns and information disclosure, use these relationships to design novel interventions, and explore the role of social interventions in bridging the gap between information privacy concerns and behaviors.
This goal was realized by conducting a 20 day between-subject field study comparing the effectiveness of interventions based on social-proof and information inconsistency with a base-line to identify the most efficient way of reducing the concern-behavior gap. Findings show that knowledge about peer behavior caused individuals to rethink their own disclosure behavior. Individuals tended to believe that their privacy concerns and information disclosure behaviors are similar to many of their peers. When they received a reminder that their concern-behavior gap was higher than their peers, they were inclined to re-evaluate their privacy concerns and behavior. Findings further showed that while any reminder about information privacy resulted in more privacy sensitive behavior, changing overall privacy concerns was a more nuanced and subtle process often influenced by external or contextual factors.
We also examined the effect that different interventions had on the cognitive processes guiding privacy decision making. From a thematic analysis of participant interviews, we were able to delve deeper into understanding how participants interacted with the interventions, the different ways in which each intervention affected privacy concerns and disclosure, and the different design elements that participants reacted to. We discussed shifts in privacy concerns and disclosure in detail breaking apart different elements of the interventions (textual, visual, numeric) and why participants found some of these elements to be more important than other. Finally, we discuss the implications of the concern-behavior gap, and the effectiveness of interventions in achieving this goal.