Understanding and Explaining
New Zealanders’ Online
Information-sharing behaviours:
A New Taxonomy
10 March 2016
Miriam Lips
Victoria University of Wellington
Knowledge gaps around online behaviour
• Personal information increasingly the ‘currency’ for various service
relationships in the digital age
• Many survey results point to people’s strong concerns about their online
privacy:
– Methodological issues
– Only asking about people’s attitudes
– Asking to think about possible scenarios
• A few empirical studies point towards a significant discrepancy between
people’s expressed concerns or attitudes towards online privacy and their
actual online information-sharing behaviours:
– not a simple desire to control and withhold personal information but exhibiting
shifting and finely tuned tendencies to disclose, manage and control personal
information depending on context, data recipient and sensitivity of information
– Evidence of a ‘privacy paradox’: discrepancy between attitudes and behaviours,
e.g. USA Internet users expressed strong online privacy concerns but involved in
trusting and intimate online activities (Fox 2000)
Existing taxonomies of online behaviour
• Westin (1996):
– Fundamentalists: people who never share any information online;
– Unconcerned: people who easily exchange any information online in return for
personal benefits;
– Pragmatists: people who balance potential consumer benefits against the
possible loss of privacy
• 6 et al. (1998):
– Privacy fatalists: people who believe that there is little that they can do to ensure
proper use of personal information;
– Privacy unconcerned: people who are content that any person or organisation
may collect information about them and see only benefits rather than risks in this;
– Privacy fundamentalists: people who are very reluctant to provide personal
information and believe that there are high risks that it will be used unfairly to
disadvantage them; and
– Privacy pragmatists: people who are prepared to provide personal information to
organisations in return for enhancements of service or other
benefits
Research questions
1) Why, to what extent, and under what circumstances do
people in New Zealand share their personal information
in online service relationships with commercial
providers, in online interactions with government, and
on Social Networking Sites (SNSs)?
2) How can these online information-sharing behaviours
be understood and explained?
Research methodology
• Mixed method approach: ‘spiralling down’ via a representative survey (476
participants), 23 interviews with participant observation and 10 Focus
Groups
• Qualitative research: grounded theory approach
• Selection of Focus Group participants:
– Non-random sampling based on criteria derived from survey and
interviews (e.g. age, ethnicity, low income, education, geographic
location, Internet use)
• 10 Focus Groups with 72 participants (6-8 per group) from beginning of
August until end of October 2014
• Focus Group participants filled out a survey and actively participated in a
qualitative collective interview of c1,5 hours.
Online activity
Information / news search
Communicated (e.g. used email, Skype)
Watched/listened to entertainment
Purchased something
Did personal banking
Used social networking
Transacted with government agencies
Stored information
Traded
Created content
Participated in education
Participated in online discussion groups.
Used iGovt or RealMe
Participated in games
Participated in online public consultations
Conducted their business
Dated
Hacked
Pretended to be someone else
Other
FG (%) Survey (%)
100
96
87
84
84
83
73
62
61
58
57
47
37
32
25
24
6
6
2
0
99
94
79
87
83
74
68
35
68
43
36
23
20
25
16
15
4
2
1
3
Comparison
– Online
activities
Research findings (1)
Why do people share their personal information online?
• The Internet is a new and highly uncertain environment for most participants.
However, it also plays a critically important part in the lives of the large
majority of participants: people couldn’t function without it:
“Our whole behaviour has changed, from prior to the Internet.”
“I used it more after the earthquakes because I didn’t want to go into
Christchurch to do things.”
• Young people are different from older generations:
– continuum from digital-by-default to digital-by-exception
– Continuum from being very online privacy savvy to only sharing ‘real’
information/not wanting to lie
• Participants made fine-grained assessments about information-sharing,
depending on context and the data recipient:
“You’re not going to be sharing the same stuff with your family as with the Inland
Revenue Department.”
• Trust played a critically important role in assessments:
“It’s about trust and who you are dealing with.”
Research findings (2)
• Most participants trusted the (NZ) government more than other websites:
“Generally government is more trusted than other websites. You know if something
goes wrong you can easily hold them responsible for that. But for some private
companies it can be hard to chase them.”
“I think for me the only site I’d trust is to do with New Zealand government
departments.”
• Most participants understand that information is value: if you want to use
the online service, you’ll need to provide your personal information
• However, many participants feel that they often don’t have a choice than to
share:
“I’m certainly cautious about what I put in, but sometimes you’ve got to. It’s a bit of
common sense about whether you want to use the site or not.”
• Many participants feel that they are often being asked to share too much
information:
“There’s the classic NYDB – None of Your Damn Business. Like when you put an
application form in to say borrow money to get a bed from Smith City, they’ve got all
these personal questions! I just want to borrow this, for this.
Why do you need to know the name of my cat and how much
I earn… Just put in NYDB.”
Research findings (3)
To what extent did people share their personal information online?
• All participants found being private online of critical importance and were all
privacy aware. However, participants have different privacy perceptions and
cultures.
• Internet use location matters for being private (e.g. home, encrypted WiFi )
• Different devices are deliberately chosen for different tasks, considering
privacy, security or usability
• Preference for more privacy-friendly SNSs or apps (e.g. WeChat)
• Online behaviours are not static but change over time:
– People become more private over time:
“Before, as a newer user, I would fill in everything. And now, “you don’t need this
information to give me what I want.” I think I’m a smarter user – if I get a funny
feeling and think “why are they asking that”, I’ll just stop and leave it, or find another
avenue to get what I want.”
– Bad experience usually leads to a change in online behaviour
• the large majority of the participants had difficulty understanding how
organisations process or use personal information they had
provided
Research findings (4)
• Multi-channel behaviours are common: online information search,
followed by offline transaction: “I quite often check up on the Internet for
something. If it’s in New Zealand I’ll phone them and order it and give my credit card
details over the phone.”
• Also, online government transactions weren’t always that easy, pushing
people to other channels: “[Government websites] They’ve got ten pages of stuff
[to fill out]. By the time I do that I could walk up to town and do it. I haven’t got time
for all that.”
• Young participants particularly struggle in dealing with government online:
“Facebook is just so easy. But when you start thinking about doing Government stuff
it’s like, I don’t know how it works, their websites are so hard to use. They send you
to different places and it isn’t clear how to get to where you want to go. Like finding
out whether you can have an allowance or not. The sort of question every student
wants to ask. You Google ‘can I get an allowance’ and it doesn’t say yes or no. It
says well there is this factor and that factor, but it doesn't actually tell you the
information simply. Regarding those sort of things I would rather not use the Internet
and go in person to the Studylink office and have someone tell
you the answer straight away. They know all the information
because it is their job.”
Research findings (5)
• Several participants indicated that when it is too intrusive, they stop and exit
the online transaction: ‘Even [when providing personal information] on the
government website. Sometimes I won’t even go there because it asks you lots of
questions.’
• Most participants have security concerns. For some, this was a reason not to
use particular websites: ‘It’s down to do you feel safe? You can avoid all that
danger by not going on the site in the first place.’
• However, a few have an attitude of “nothing to hide, nothing to fear”:
“Anyone who wants to hack into my email would go to sleep with boredom!”
• However, not all illegal online activities were considered to be bad by some
participants. For young people, online hacking was a way of teasing their
friends
Research findings (6)
Under what circumstances did people share their personal information online?
• All participants were conscious of online privacy and security risks. For
some, these online risks were reasons for not sharing any of their personal
information online: ‘I don’t give any information out. Zero. So I’ve got nothing to
worry about.’
• The large majority of participants had developed strategies through which
they could share information online but in a protected way, including using a
particular location for online transactions, using privacy settings, a friends
policy on SNSs, using pseudonyms.
• Particularly young people and Asian people were very careful with sharing
their real information with others online: ‘I usually don’t give all my correct details
when I sign up for things. I’ll change my date of birth or my address or just use an
initial.”
• Another strategy many participants used is to provide minimal information
about themselves online
• Most participants struggled and admitted that they didn’t
have enough knowledge on how to keep their information
private
A new taxonomy of online informationsharing behaviour
• Privacy pragmatist: depending on the transactional relationship, privacy is
a commodity (“personal information helps you to get the services you
want/need”). Personal information is traded in for convenience, efficiency or
particular services, e.g.: “Depends. If I really want what they’ve got I’ll do it.”
• Privacy victim: loss of privacy is inevitable in order to use the service:
people see no choice. They stop using the online service when the
informational demands are too intrusive: “You get to the point that you either
have to accept that they have the potential to throw more of your information out
there, or “I just can’t use this app anymore.” You still have a choice – use it or don’t
use it.”
• Privacy optimist: people are willing to keeping doing what they think might
be risky until something bad happens to confirm it: “I’m quite amazed I’ve just
typed in my credit card number and they’ve got no security… I do that sometimes. I
think, oh I’ll find out if it’s going to… The banks will look after you.”
• Privacy fatalist: major breach of privacy and power imbalance are
inevitable and unescapable: “For me there’s no privacy
anymore. When you asked me about what sort of information I
put on the Internet, it’s irrelevant because there is open access
to every area of your life.”