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Graeff and Harmon (2002) found, experienced
online purchasers demand to be informed and/or
have a say in the sharing between organisations
of their personal information.
Factor III, labeled
privacy suspicious
, high-
lights consumer concerns about company behavior
and explains 14.45% of the total variance (Table
1). For example, these online household end users
are concerned about how companies use personal
information and potentially divulge users' details.
Three items load onto this factor: awareness of
companies' plans to share personal information,
belief that company privacy policies are hard to
find, and checking to ensure e-mail and online
phone numbers are provided before transacting
with a company. The
privacy suspicious
construct
highlights the point that users' privacy concerns
also extend to suspicions that commercial or-
ganisations may fail to guard consumer data and
privacy. Previous privacy research (Sheehan &
Hoy, 2000) found that users' concerns about pri-
vacy increased because of company management
behavior such as disclosing a consumer's personal
information without permission. In contrast, us-
ers' beliefs that firms use fair information practices
will ease privacy concerns (Culnan & Bies, 2003)
and should reduce perceived risk.
(or decreases) the probability of a particular out-
come. We now develop the hypotheses that drive
Study 2 and discuss the relationship between
privacy concerns, risk, and outcome behavior
in terms of the e-privacy dimensions of privacy
awareness, privacy suspicion, and privacy ac-
tive derived in Study 1. We present two lines of
argument. In the first, we adopt a “hierarchy of
effects” model of expert household end users'
privacy concerns, relating awareness to suspi-
cious to active. The hierarchy of effects is a well
recognised marketing model (Lavidge & Steiner,
1961) which proposes that consumers move
through subsequent stages of awareness (think),
affection (feel), and conation (do). Moreover, this
model has been specifically used in Internet related
research (Huizingh & Hoekstra, 2003) to describe
attitudinal changes of online consumers leading
to behavioral changes after visiting a Web site.
In the second line of argument, the relationships
between the stages in the privacy hierarchy and
perceived risk are proposed. We then propose a
relationship between the end stage of the privacy
hierarchy, privacy active, and online subscription
and purchasing intentions. We conclude with a
proposed relationship between perceived risk and
online subscription and purchasing behavior. The
proposed relationships are shown in Figure 1.
Privacy awareness and the extent of knowledge
about privacy issues have been raised by a number
of researchers (e.g., Graeff & Harmon, 2002).
However, there has been little research to examine
the impact of this awareness on subsequent privacy
attitudes and protective behaviors. Dhillon and
Moore's (2001) research suggest that as consum-
ers become more aware of privacy issues, they
question how firms use the information that is
collected about them. These authors suggest that
the provision by consumers of such information
should be made discretionary. This questioning
and apparent suspicion aroused in consumers leads
us to hypothesise that higher levels of privacy
awareness are positively related to increased levels
of privacy suspicion (Hypothesis 1a).
study 2: relationship between
e-privacy dimensions, perceived
risk, and online subscription and
purchasing behavior
Development of Hypotheses
Figure 1 illustrates a number of inferred causal
relationships between the expert end user pri-
vacy dimensions empirically derived in Study
1, perceived risk, and online subscription and
purchasing behaviors. These were tested in the
second stage of this exploratory research using
a probabilistic approach to causation. De Vaus
(2001) defines probabilistic approaches to causa-
tion as the argument that a given factor increases
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