Measuring Inherent Privacy Concern and Desire for Privacy - A Pilot Survey Study of an Instrument to Measure Dispositional Privacy Concern

With the increasing ubiquity and power of technology for collecting, storing, processing and disseminating personal information, a model of privacy concern is required - richer than that provided by existing classifications based on general privacy concern, or measures of concern about organizations´ information handling practices. The author has previously proposed a model of users´ privacy concerns encompassing: a) general, or inherent, privacy concern, b) environmental influences, and c) organization- and technology-specific attributes. As part of the development of this model, this paper describes a pilot survey study using an online survey instrument (N = 353) and structural equation modeling, to develop a measure of inherent privacy concern: Dispositional Privacy Concern (DPC). Two constructs within DPC were extracted from the survey data: 1) Concern about the Privacy Behavior of Organizations and Governments (CPBOG), and 2) Desire for Privacy (DFP). The study found the two personality metatraits of the Big Five - Stability and Plasticity - were negatively related to CPBOG and DFP, respectively. In turn, CPBOG and DFP were found to be positively related to the Internet Users´ Information Privacy Concerns (Malhotra et al., 2004). The paper concludes with a discussion of the study´s identification of the CPBOG and DFP constructs, the influence of personality traits on privacy concern, and the implications of the study´s findings for research of general privacy concern.