Privacy concerns and avoidance behaviour towards data-driven online behavioural advertising

Abstract

PurposeWith the developments of the digital era and considerable developments in ICT, advertisers are leveraging data-driven forms of online advertising to target consumers individually. The present study integrates privacy concerns with the constructs from the persuasion knowledge model to investigate consumer avoidance of online behavioural advertising (OBA).Design/methodology/approachThe study employed an online survey method for data collection using a sample size of 345. Reliability and validity of the measurement scales were ensured, and hypotheses developed were tested through PLS-SEM using SMART PLS.FindingsThe results show that persuasion knowledge is a significant predictor of perceived benefits, perceived risks and privacy concerns. Also, privacy concern was found to significantly mediate persuasion knowledge-avoidance behaviour and perceived risk-avoidance behaviour. On the other hand, the perceived benefit was not found significant in influencing privacy concerns for OBA.Practical implicationsThe present study is one of the initial attempts to understand the level of knowledge Indian consumers hold about OBA and how they evaluate and respond to these data-driven forms of advertising. The current study helps advance knowledge of the field and the theories used. Future studies might look at the effect of various demographic and psychographic aspects on consumer avoidance of OBA.Originality/valueAs the country is shifting to digital, it becomes really important to understand the privacy concerns that people perceive in regard with the current advertising practices.

Balancing perceptions of targeting: An investigation of political microtargeting transparency through a calculus approach

“…Prior work shows that in the case of behavioral advertising, persuasion knowledge affects privacy risk perceptions. While existing research shows that if people know that they are exposed to personalized messages, this affects privacy risks [54] or that users even feel that these messages are intrusive or creepy, our results did not align with this [23,53]. Moreover, we would like to point out that our result aligns with the novel work by Dobber and colleagues, who also did not find a relationship between exposure to transparency information and users' privacy concerns [36].…”

“…Recent work validating a scale on perceived surveillance concerning personalization effects found that users experience creepiness, concerns about surveillance, perceptions of privacy risks overall, and privacy concerns [53]. In addition, other work found that in the case of data-driven OBA, persuasion knowledge, on which the concept of targeting knowledge is built, positively affects privacy risks, which could be considered as the cost side of the privacy calculus theory [54]. Dobber and colleagues [13] found that privacy concerns regarding PMT lead to more negative attitudes towards the technique and reversibly a higher attitude towards the technique leads to a decrease in privacy concerns.…”