Understanding the Impact of Household End Users’ Privacy and Risk Perceptions on Online Behavior - End User Computing Challenges and Technologies: Emerging Tools and Applications - page 15

use of their personal information (Culnan, 1995;
Nowak & Phelps, 1995). A recent study in the
U.S. and Italy by Dinev, Bellotto, Hart, Russo,
Serra, and Colautti (2006) found that an Internet
user's decision to conduct e-commerce transac-
tions is influenced by privacy concerns, as well
as their perception of the need for government
surveillance to secure the Internet environment
from fraud, crime, and terrorism, which is then
balanced against their concerns about govern-
ment intrusion. The Internet was designed on the
assumption of anonymity; however, the reality
has been a shift away from this original premise
(Nijboer, 2004; Shah, White, & Cook, 2007).
Some futurists, for example, George Orwell
(1951) in 1984 , foreshadowed the interest of the
state in observing the citizen, which has achieved
new significance post-9/11. The motivation of busi-
ness in monitoring and maintaining surveillance
of customers, considered likely to undermine
anonymity, privacy, and thus perhaps freedom,
and consumers' reactions to loss of privacy is
receiving continued attention (e.g., Retsky, 2001).
For example, research indicates that consumers
experience loss of privacy as being embarrassing
(Grace, 2007). Implicit in the conceptualisation of
privacy as the ability of individuals to restrict in-
formation is the recognition that there may emerge
a community consensus regarding which type of
personal information is not for public consump-
tion and that there are rights and duties on both
sides of the exchange (Charters, 2002).
It has been accepted (Westin for Federal Trade
Commission, 1996) that consumers fall into three
basic types with regard to privacy in the general
sense: the privacy fundamentalists who always
tend to choose privacy controls over consumer
benefits; the privacy unconcerned who tend to
forgo most privacy claims in exchange for service
benefits; and the privacy pragmatists who weigh
the benefits of various consumer opportunities and
services against the degree of personal informa-
tion sought. Recently, the Westin typology has
been tested and extended to specifically apply to

the online consumer. The study (Sheehan, 2002)
found that online consumers in the U.S. are better
represented by a four-part typology consisting of
the unconcerned, circumspect, wary, and alarmed
Internet users. This four-part typology for online
consumers was established as a result of the iden-
tification of the high percentage of pragmatists
(81%) compared to the Westin study (50%). Prag-
matists were thus divided into circumspect and
the wary group. Fundamentalists were renamed
alarmed Internet users.
The unconcerned Internet users rarely com-
plain about privacy breaches, and when registering
at Web sites rarely provide inaccurate information.
The next group, termed circumspect Internet us-
ers, have minimal concerns about privacy overall,
although there are some situations that may cause
them to have higher levels of concern about priva-
cy. In addition, they give incomplete information
quite often when registering for Web sites. The
third group, wary Internet users, have a moder-
ate level of concern with most online situations.
They experience higher than average concern
for Internet privacy, including clandestine data
collection practices. They occasionally complain
about privacy breaches and are likely to provide
incomplete information when they sporadically
register for Web sites. The final group, consist-
ing of alarmed Internet users, are most likely to
complain about privacy breaches, rarely register
for Web sites and, when they do, they are likely
to provide incomplete and inaccurate data.
Sheehan and Hoy (2000) also conducted a
survey using 15 privacy scenarios. Results from
this study indicate that privacy dimensions are
first related to control over, and collection of,
information. The further two privacy dimensions
refer to privacy within a short-term transactional
relationship and an established long term rela-
tionship.
The typologies of Sheehan and Hoy (2000) and
Sheehan (2002) relate to early types of technology
use, such as e-mail, and construct the end user in
a passive role where he or she only becomes aware