Abstract-Internet privacy policies describe an organization's practices on data collection, use, and disclosure. These privacy policies both protect the organization and signal integrity commitment to site visitors. Consumers use the stated website policies to guide browsing and transaction decisions. This paper compares the classes of privacy protection goals (which express desired protection of consumer privacy rights) and vulnerabilities (which potentially threaten consumer privacy) with consumer privacy values. For this study, we looked at privacy policies from nearly 50 websites and surveyed over 1000 Internet users. We examined Internet users' major expectations about website privacy and revealed a notable discrepancy between what privacy policies are currently stating and what users deem most significant. Our findings suggest several implications to privacy managers and software project managers. Results from this study can help managers determine the kinds of policies needed to both satisfy user values and ensure privacy-aware website development efforts.
Consumers are more protective of their personal data than most e-marketers probably ever expected. Indeed, any willingness by consumers to provide certain information online greatly depends on who's doing the asking.
SYNOPSIS
The number of companies reporting their corporate sustainability (CS) activities has significantly increased over the last decade. The result being a wide variability in the types of activities being reported and the ways the information is presented. An unanswered question is whether the information being reported by companies following the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) CS framework is of interest to arguably one of the primary stakeholder groups, customers. Our study seeks to fill this knowledge gap by comparing the content of CS reports to results from a large-scale consumer stakeholder survey. By performing factor analysis on stakeholder evaluation of the importance of CS activities, we find that consumers see different dimensions than those put forth by the GRI framework, thereby suggesting a disconnect between corporate sustainability reporting and stakeholder views and interests. Our results indicate that risk and compliance are dimensions of interest to customers, while the GRI economic dimension is not viewed as important. Additionally, a new dimension of social justice is the most important to consumer stakeholders. Furthermore, the study highlights particular activities within each factor that are most important to the consumer stakeholder group. This research has implications for preparers of sustainability reports and organizations, such as the GRI, that establish guidance for sustainability reporting.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.