The Role of Risk Perceptions in Privacy Concerns Evaluation

The collection of information on individual persons for personal data intensive systems and services poses the risk of privacy violations and raises privacy concerns. Individuals´ privacy concerns and risk perceptions affect their decision-making on personal data disclosure for services. In the research presented in this paper, data subjects´ privacy concerns and risk perceptions were studied by surveying drivers on the possibility of collecting driving data on their vehicles. The research sought to explore the following questions: (1) How are data subjects´ risk perceptions related to their privacy concerns, (2) how do risk perceptions and privacy concerns jointly affect willingness to disclose data, (3) how should risk perceptions be incorporated into evaluation of data subjects´ privacy behavior? The study´s primary findings were as follows: (1) surprisingly, clear dependencies between risk perceptions and privacy concerns were not found, (2) data subjects risk perceptions and two privacy concerns-related factors independently affected their willingness to disclose data -- the two privacy concerns-related factors were the data subjects´ perceptions of other drivers´ privacy concerns and their discussing information privacy with other drivers, (3) risk perceptions, in combination with privacy concerns, should be incorporated into the data subjects´ privacy behavior evaluations. The results of the study contribute to improving the validity of privacy behavior measurements and models.