VERTICAL OR HORIZONTAL? AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE ROLE OF PRIVACY LITERACY AND PRIVACY SELF-EFFICACY ON THE DIMENSIONALITY OF PRIVACY

Abstract

The goals of this study are two-fold. We extend established models linking attitudes related to privacy concerns and privacy protecting behavior (PPB) by (a) differentiating between horizontal (social) and vertical (institutional) orientations of PPB as capturing an aspect of privacy multidimensionality, and (b) introducing additional explanatory factors such as privacy literacy and privacy self-efficacy into the modeling of PPB. We survey a representative sample of 686 US social media users to test relationships between privacy concern, trust, privacy self-efficacy, privacy literacy, and vertical and horizontal PPB. We find privacy concerns contribute to horizontal and vertical PPB at different levels, reinforcing the dimensionality of privacy. We also find that privacy literacy and privacy self-efficacy are important factors in explaining dimensional privacy behaviors and moderate the established relationships between privacy concerns and PPB.