Measuring Inherent Privacy Concern and Desire for Privacy - A Pilot Survey Study of an Instrument to Measure Dispositional Privacy Concern

Abstract

With the increasing ubiquity and power of technology for collecting, storing, processing and disseminating personal information, a model of privacy concern is required - richer than that provided by existing classifications based on general privacy concern, or measures of concern about organizations' information handling practices. The author has previously proposed a model of users' privacy concerns encompassing: a) general, or inherent, privacy concern, b) environmental influences, and c) organization- and technology-specific attributes. As part of the development of this model, this paper describes a pilot survey study using an online survey instrument (N = 353) and structural equation modeling, to develop a measure of inherent privacy concern: Dispositional Privacy Concern (DPC). Two constructs within DPC were extracted from the survey data: 1) Concern about the Privacy Behavior of Organizations and Governments (CPBOG), and 2) Desire for Privacy (DFP). The study found the two personality metatraits of the Big Five - Stability and Plasticity - were negatively related to CPBOG and DFP, respectively. In turn, CPBOG and DFP were found to be positively related to the Internet Users' Information Privacy Concerns (Malhotra et al., 2004). The paper concludes with a discussion of the study's identification of the CPBOG and DFP constructs, the influence of personality traits on privacy concern, and the implications of the study's findings for research of general privacy concern.