The influence of privacy, trust, and national culture on internet transactions

Abstract

A privacy paradox still exists between consumers’ willingness to transact online and their stated Information privacy concerns. MIS research has the capacity to contribute to societal research in this area (Dinev 2014) and cultural differences are one important area of investigation. The global nature of e-commerce makes cultural factors likely to have a significant impact on this concern. Building on work done in the area of culture and privacy, and also trust and privacy, we explore the three way relationship between culture, privacy and trust. Emerge. A key originality of this work is the use of the GLOBE variables to measure culture. These provide a more contemporary measure of culture and overcome some of the criticisms levelled at the much used Hofstede variables. Since the late 1990s scholars have been exploring ways of measuring Privacy. Whilst attitudinal measures around concern for information privacy are only one proxy for privacy itself, such measures have evolved in sophistication. Smith et al. developed the Global Information Privacy Scale which evolved into the 15 question parsimonious CFIP scale (Smith 1996) Leading on from this Malhotra developed the internet users information privacy concerns (IUIPC) which takes into account individuals differing perceptions of fairness and justice using social contract theory. We present the results of an exploratory empirical study that uses both GLOBE and IUIPC via a set of scenarios to determine the strength of national culture as an antecedent to IUIPC and the concomitant effect of IUIPC on trust and risk.