Attention economics in information rich environments
Researcher(s): Alessandro Acquisti
Research Area: Protecting Privacy and Confidentiality of Information
Abstract
Our previous CyLab research established that consumers are willing to pay a premium for increased online privacy. However, despite valuing privacy, consumers do not take advantage of freely available public tools that may help gauge their privacy protection in various transactions. For example, studies show that few people read website privacy policies to determine which sites to purchase from or employ software tools to protect their online privacy, (TOR, cookie management, PGP, etc.) We see to understand how people make privacy-relevant decisions and how to better support those decisions.
We propose to:
- Conduct online experiments to study comprehension and psychological acceptability of privacy policies in various formats.
- Develop and text a standardized privacy policy that can serve as a "nutrition label" for privacy.
- Analyze domain name purchase data to determine willingness to pay for privacy proxy services that protect registrant WHOSIS data.
- Conduct online experiments to determine the premium online shoppers are willing to pay to shop at web sites that offer superior privacy policies.
- Conduct laboratory experiments to determine the impact of the timing of privacy information on purchases.
- Conduct a Privacy Finder field study to study the impact of privacy icons on browsing behavior in a natural setting.