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of privacy issues after a breach has occurred. The
studies are descriptive and do not link privacy
types overtly to consequent online behaviors.
A recent literature review has also criticised
privacy typologies such as Sheehan (2002) based
on the conventional segmentation of fundamen-
talist, unconcerned, and pragmatist on a number
of grounds (Perri 6, 2002). These include criti-
cisms that the typology bears no relationship to
risk in other consumption practices and has no
underlying theoretical rationale to explain the
privacy types. Moreover, at a practical level, the
criticism has been raised that the most common
type, the pragmatic type, is too vague and likely
to lead to business complacency. A new way of
understanding privacy risk perception has been
proposed (Perri 6, 2002) based on neo-Durkheim-
ian institutionalist theory, using the social group
as the unit of analysis. Perri 6 did not undertake
empirical research to test the validity of the
typology, and owing to unfamiliar theoretical
framework in neo-Durkheimian institutionalist
theory (rather than the more usual individual
psychology paradigm), it has limited practical
utility for online privacy research. However, the
conceptualisation appears to offer some ability
to understand how consumers may move in their
privacy risk perception and offers marketers
some insight into how privacy communication
may be framed.
Consistent with Perri 6 (2002) and others
(Buchanan et al., 2007; Ho & Ng, 1994; Hoy
& Phelps, 2003; Miyazaki & Fernandez, 2001),
we argue that perceived risk is fundamental to
understanding consumer concerns about privacy
online and the relationship among privacy, risk,
and online purchase intentions is central to en-
hancing our understanding the behavior of expert
online household end users.
The issue of perceived risk in consumer
purchase has been addressed by a large number
of studies over the years (e.g., Mitchell, 1999).
Perceived risk can be defined as an expectation of
loss (e.g. , Stone & Winter, 1987) or “consumer's
subjective belief of suffering a loss in pursuit of a
desired outcome” (Pavlou, 2003, p. 109). Viewed
in this way, risk is strongly negatively correlated
theoretiCal approaChes to
Consumers' online privaCy,
risk perCeption, and the
expert online Consumer
Several studies have attempted to measure privacy
concerns; however, most studies tend to focus
on informational privacy and privacy scales are
usually approached with a view of privacy as a
one-dimensional construct (Buchanan, Paine,
Joinson, & Reips, 2007). Recently, Malhotra,
Kim, and Agarwal (2004) operationalised a mul-
tidimensional model of Internet users information
privacy concerns (IUIPC). Their model consid-
ers multiple aspects of informational privacy
and identifies attitudes towards the collection
of personal information, control over personal
information, and awareness of privacy practices
of companies gathering personal information as
being components of a second-order construct
called IUIPC. Although this model does consider
multiple aspects of privacy, all of these aspects still
lie within the domain of informational privacy.
Buchanan et al. (2007) attempted to broaden our
understanding of privacy concerns by develop-
ing three measurement instruments to capture
online consumers' privacy concerns and result-
ing behaviors. They argue that to understand the
impact of privacy, it is important to understand
the behaviors that result from various positions
on privacy, such as purchasing and privacy pro-
tection actions. However, their results failed to
elicit clear patterns related to attitudinal variables,
and further research aimed at more fine-grained
understanding of Internet users' real-life privacy
concerns is necessary (Paine, Reips, Stieger, Join-
son, & Buchanan, 2006). Moreover, the research
and typologies have not focused on the issue of
expert end users' privacy concerns.
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