engleski

The effect of government regulation in reducing online privacy concern

This paper examines effects of regulation as antecedent of online privacy concern. The aim of the research is to analyze if and how perceived effectiveness of government regulation affects Internet users’ concern for their privacy in the online environment. Existing research examined the impacts of regulation, legal and regulatory policies on online privacy concern indicating that Internet users often have limited knowledge and resources to protect their data. Therefore they might rely on institutional laws and regulations so perceived effectiveness of regulatory policies and their enforcement reduces online privacy concern (Lwin, Wirtz & Williams, 2007). The findings however do not provide explanation what factors lay behind this relationship. This research fills the gap and provides insight at the large sample of Internet users in the post-transition country. Using the survey data of over 2000 Internet users in Croatia, we empirically test the perceived degree of regulatory control and its efficiency and online privacy concern nexus. Respondents were asked to declare if the existing country legislation and government effort is sufficient to protect online privacy or there should be more strict regulation put in place to protect personal privacy online. The different attitudes are analyzed in the context of socio-demographic characteristics of respondents, computer anxiety, individual desire to maintain control of personal information, as well as intensity and diversity of online activities. The dependent variable in the regression model is online privacy concern represented as index computed from these six questionnaire items measured on the 5-point Likert type scale. The model was tested with OLS and Ordered Probit Estimation and results confirm that perceived effectiveness of government regulation reduces privacy concern online. Besides contributing to developing an extended model of online privacy concern, our findings might be useful for national policy-makers as well as for business strategies, in particular in the context of GDPR regulation coming in force in 2018.

regulation ; data protection ; privacy concern online ; Croatia

Rad i sudjelovanje na međunarodnom znanstvenom skupu je financirala HRZZ, projekt broj 7913.