Privacy, Habits and Apps: The Moderating Role of Habit Strength for the Privacy Paradox Among Adolescent Smartphone App Users

• In Event: ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session III
  In Interactive Paper Session: Information Systems Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

Research on adolescents’ Internet and Social Media use has argued for a ‘privacy paradox’: Even if users are aware of potential privacy infringements, they do little to prevent them. Thus, we observe a discrepancy between privacy attitudes and actual online behavior. We expand existing research on the privacy paradox in two ways: First, we are concentrating on adolescents’ privacy attitudes towards smartphone apps. With smartphone apps becoming more and more popular among adolescent, we see issues of potential privacy infringement as a crucial new area of research. Second, we see users’ habit strength for downloading apps as a moderating factor for the relationship between privacy attitudes and actual behavior. We test our assumption in a setting where we confront N = 55 adolescents with choice options for smartphone apps. Results point into the proposed direction but were not significant. Implications for future research are discussed.

Authors

• Isabell Ziegler, U of Erfurt

• Sven Joeckel, U of Erfurt

• Wonsun Shin, Nanyang Technological U