Toward a Typology of Internet Users and Online Privacy Concerns

Sheehan, Kim Bartel. "Toward a Typology of Internet Users and Online Privacy Concerns." Information Society 18, no. 1 (January 2002): 21-32.

This article explores the differences in consumers’ attitudes towards privacy online and the concept of privacy in the traditional sense. The author, Sheehan, borrows a topology of traditional consumers developed by another researcher, Alan Westin. Sheehan’s aim is to determine whether online consumers’ can be categorized in the same way as Westin categorized traditional consumers, by dividing them into three distinct groups based on their attitudes towards privacy.

She first examines the literature on this subject and discusses the contextual nature of privacy as well as the definition of privacy, highlighting that the definition depends on the context. People’s attitude towards privacy tends to fluctuate on a sliding scale depending on how much knowledge they have of the concept and what situation they are presented with. Some studies done in the late 1990’s suggest that people’s desire to enjoy the benefits of e-commerce outweigh their privacy concerns. In addition, those same studies uncovered that peoples’ increased familiarity and experience using the internet resulted in them having less concern over privacy issues. She touches on these studies as part of her literature review and in contrast to her own research.

Her study of internet users’ attitudes about privacy was done using an e-mail survey sent to 3,724 people, where she presented the participants with scenarios related to online privacy. She also collected demographic data and information about their computer usage. She used a probability sampling method of randomly selected internet users for her sample that could potentially be generalized to the larger population. Using a 7 point bipolar scale with numbers ranging from 1 to 7 indicating levels of concern between not concerned and highly concerned, the respondents were asked to choose their level of concern relative to the various privacy related scenarios that were presented to them.

In analyzing the results of her survey, Sheehan found that her findings were much different than that of Westin. This resulted in her further dividing the topology of internet users into four groups instead of three, veering from Westin’s idea of using three. The four groups she identified were the following: unconcerned Internet users, circumspect Internet users, wary Internet users, and alarmed Internet users.

Overall, the study revealed that the majority of internet users were concerned about privacy at the time when this study was done in 2002. Sheehan found that most internet users could be classified as “pragmatic” about privacy denoting that their attitude about privacy online depended on the particular situation they were in. Additionally, the demographic information allowed her to discover that people who are more educated tend to more concerned about privacy; younger peoples’ attitudes towards privacy are more pragmatic; people over the age of 45 tend to be split on this issue, with half of them being very concerned about online privacy and half of them not concerned at all.

Sheehan suggests future studies including one that would determine how knowledgeable people are about protecting themselves online. One of the purposes of this study was to provide a structure and a baseline of knowledge in order to conduct future studies on peoples’ attitudes towards internet privacy.

Sheehan has done a very thorough job with her research, detailing every aspect of her methodology and documenting all of the challenges that she faced. Her literature review is very detailed, and she attempts to explore the definitions of traditional privacy in contrast to online privacy. In this attempt, she also expertly and creatively redefines ideas about privacy through well chose references from her literature review as in the description of privacy as a “continuum”. Her data analysis is very meticulous and appears to be completely unbiased, as she is not looking for a particular “reaction” from her respondents but aims to create a framework to conduct further research studies from. She strives to understand attitudes towards online privacy, the factors that influence those attitudes, and understanding for others in her field.

Although this article could be considered somewhat dated due to its publishing date of 2002, it provides a reference point for understanding how peoples’ attitudes towards online privacy were during that time. One of the objectives for my research paper is to underscore that peoples’ attitudes towards online privacy have become more relaxed. This may be partially due to a lack of knowledge on the subject and partially due to their keen interest in participating in all of the riveting activities that now exist on the web. Their desire to participate in those activities has outweighed their concerns for online privacy. This paper provides substantial evidence that people were fairly concerned about their online privacy in 2002, and it would be interesting to see where things stand now.