A Survey of Consumer Information Privacy from the Accounting Information Systems Research Perspective
Year: 2010
Type: preprint
Abstract: The information privacy of consumers is an important public policy issue in today’s society, and one that businesses, industries and governments are continuing to struggle with as information technology innovations create ever-stronger impacts. In this article, we explore consumer information privacy issues and review the results of related prior research. We provide a survey of the literature on information privacy based on our assessment from (1) the societal and public policy perspective, (2) the business practices perspective, and (3) the individual privacy and consumer behavior perspectives that relate to the disclosure of private information by individuals to firms. From the societal and public policy perspective, we identify main research directions that relate to the social welfare implications of personal information surveillance, the safeguards needed at the societal level, and the privacy-enhancing regulations that should especially target ITs. From the business practices perspective, we suggest research directions that involve the examination of factors influencing organizational choices of privacy practices. We also offer some ways to discover how organizations can leverage their investments in information privacy. The individual and consumer behavior perspective, in turn, prompts AIS researchers to look at the nature of people’s beliefs and attitudes about privacy, the ways such attitudes affect their intentions and behaviors, and how individuals' behaviors can be influenced by organizational privacy policies and practices. The main contribution of this article is to understand these issues and identify opportunities for enriching the current body of knowledge on this critical topic to Accounting Information Systems (AIS) researchers.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3122313828