TY - JOUR
T1 - Personality and social framing in privacy decision-making
T2 - a study on cookie acceptance
AU - Coventry, Lynne M.
AU - Jeske, Debora
AU - Blythe, John M.
AU - Turland, James
AU - Briggs, Pam
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would further like to thank colleagues from Computing Science at Newcastle University for their support and the contribution to this research. We would also like to thank the reviewers for their feedback. The work presented in this paper was funded through the Choice Architecture for Information Security (ChAIse) project (EP/K006568/1) from Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), UK, and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), UK, as a part of the Research Institute in Science of Cyber Security.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Coventry, Jeske, Blythe, Turland and Briggs.
PY - 2016/9/7
Y1 - 2016/9/7
N2 - Despite their best intentions, people struggle with the realities of privacy protection and will often sacrifice privacy for convenience in their online activities. Individuals show systematic, personality dependent differences in their privacy decision making, which makes it interesting for those who seek to design 'nudges' designed to manipulate privacy behaviors. We explore such effects in a cookie decision task. Two hundred and ninety participants were given an incidental website review task that masked the true aim of the study. At the task outset, they were asked whether they wanted to accept a cookie in a message that either contained a social framing 'nudge' (they were told that either a majority or a minority of users like themselves had accepted the cookie) or contained no information about social norms (control). At the end of the task, participants were asked to complete a range of personality assessments (impulsivity, risk-taking, willingness to self-disclose and sociability). We found social framing to be an effective behavioral nudge, reducing cookie acceptance in the minority social norm condition. Further, we found personality effects in that those scoring highly on risk-taking and impulsivity were significantly more likely to accept the cookie. Finally, we found that the application of a social nudge could attenuate the personality effects of impulsivity and risk-taking. We explore the implications for those working in the privacy-by-design space.
AB - Despite their best intentions, people struggle with the realities of privacy protection and will often sacrifice privacy for convenience in their online activities. Individuals show systematic, personality dependent differences in their privacy decision making, which makes it interesting for those who seek to design 'nudges' designed to manipulate privacy behaviors. We explore such effects in a cookie decision task. Two hundred and ninety participants were given an incidental website review task that masked the true aim of the study. At the task outset, they were asked whether they wanted to accept a cookie in a message that either contained a social framing 'nudge' (they were told that either a majority or a minority of users like themselves had accepted the cookie) or contained no information about social norms (control). At the end of the task, participants were asked to complete a range of personality assessments (impulsivity, risk-taking, willingness to self-disclose and sociability). We found social framing to be an effective behavioral nudge, reducing cookie acceptance in the minority social norm condition. Further, we found personality effects in that those scoring highly on risk-taking and impulsivity were significantly more likely to accept the cookie. Finally, we found that the application of a social nudge could attenuate the personality effects of impulsivity and risk-taking. We explore the implications for those working in the privacy-by-design space.
U2 - 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01341
DO - 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01341
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84994415947
SN - 1664-1078
VL - 7
JO - Frontiers in Psychology
JF - Frontiers in Psychology
M1 - 1341
ER -