How Can We Increase Privacy Protection Behavior? A Longitudinal Experiment Testing Three Intervention Strategies

Abstract

This study investigates which intervention strategies most effectively increase privacy protection behavior. Drawing upon Protection Motivation Theory, we examine the short- and long-term effects of (combinations) of three strategies: (1) increasing awareness of the threat to privacy, (2) training effective privacy protection behavior, and (3) addressing and combating privacy fatigue. We conducted a longitudinal experiment in the Netherlands with three waves ( Nwave1 = 1,000, 2 weeks later Nwave2 = 799, 2 months later Nwave3 = 465) and eight between subjects conditions (no strategy and all possible combinations of the strategies). Results show that the training strategy increased self-efficacy and response efficacy, immediately increased all privacy protection behaviors, and positively impacted tracking blocking behavior in the short- and long-term, actual cookie rejection in the short-term (2 weeks later), and deletion behavior in the long-term (2 months later). The threat and fatigue strategies did not have their anticipated effects, but the threat strategy did immediately increase tracking blocking intentions, and the fatigue strategy had a positive, short-term effect on cookie rejection behavior.

Differences in Access to Privacy Information Can Partly Explain Digital Inequalities in Privacy Literacy and Self-Efficacy

“…Not only do people who report having more access to privacy information in their daily routine have higher privacy knowledge, they also have more confidence in their abilities to manage their privacy online. This corroborates previous studies finding that exposure to news articles about privacy is associated with higher levels of privacy literacy (Morrow, 2022) or that teaching people how to protect oneself increases privacy self-efficacy (Boerman et al, 2023). We expand the literature by showing that also ordinary contact with privacy information among friends, colleagues, or as part of one's media consumption can be beneficial to users.…”

“…Such campaigns could be part of school and university education, workplace trainings, or consumer protection programs. Providing individuals with privacy information can increase their literacy and self-protection behaviors (Boerman et al, 2023;Morrow, 2022). However, despite the potentials of these strategies, we must point to the fact that privacy self-management is and remains a flawed and very limited approach (Baruh & Popescu, 2017;Kröger et al, 2021).…”

“…One objective of this study is to examine whether differences in privacy literacy between sociodemographic groups can be explained by different levels of access to privacy information. Our assumption is that regular access to privacy information is positively related to privacy literacy (Boerman et al, 2023;Morrow, 2022).…”