privacy protection as a matter of trust: how trust in facebook and trust in friends lead to...

Rheinische Fachhochschule Köln – University of Applied Science / University of Cologne

Christian Bosau

Privacy protection as a matter of trust:

How trust in Facebook and trust in friends lead to different behaviour in

social networks

Bosau – Privacy protection as a matter of trust 8th Conference of the Media Psychology Division - 2013 Seite 2

Privacy and Facebook



source: „Die Zeit“, No. 34, 14.08.2013

29 people in a small office in small Portarlington in the middle of nowhere in Irland à control whether Facebook follows the lax irish data privacy laws


Purpose of the study

Main purpose: Looking into trust and the members‘ reaction in social networks a bit deeper

Aspects about Facebook: •  members are aware of privacy risks (Bosau, Becks & Aelker, 2009; Bosau, Fischer & Koll, 2008)

•  still à huge amount of usage •  members try out different protection strategies to lower privacy risks (Young & Quan-

Haase, 2009)

•  members restrict their profile (Utz & Krämer, 2009), however mostly to their “friends”-list •  but what about information management?

The importance of privacy concerns & trust: •  how people generally think about privacy and whether they trust the

requestor influences how much information they give online (Joinson, Reips, Buchanan & Paine-Schofield, 2010)


Two agents to be trusted

The platform provider (e.g. Facebook): •  many reports discuss the misbehaviour of Facebook regarding privacy issues

•  people know the risk, but don’t care?

The “friends”: •  users add numerous people to their friends-list, even people, that are not close

friends

•  managing the increasing number of different kinds of “friends” becomes an issue

Main question: Who is the requestor, i.e. the communication partner in a social network?


The study

Method: •  online questionnaire (posted via mailing-lists and personal emails,

snowball sampling) in February/March 2012 •  270 participants •  age: mean=24,8 SD=5,4 male=24%, female=76%

Former studies: §  measurement of privacy concerns, privacy protection behaviour & information dissemination separately

This study: §  combining the different aspects in one single study §  differentiation between two trust agents

Research question / hypotheses: •  Trust in Facebook and trust in “friends” are two separate factors. •  How do the different kinds of trust (in “friends” & in Facebook) matter, when it

comes to protecting the privacy in a social network? à dependent variable: privacy protection behaviour in Facebook


The dependent variables

Information input

•  Question: “Which of the following informational aspects have you put into your profile?”

•  Scale: 0 = no vs. 1 = yes

•  11 items, summed up to a single indicator à amount of information

•  e.g. “birthday” “address & home town” “name” “relationship status” “gender” “favourite music/hobbies/interests” “profile picture”

Information deletion

•  based on Young & Quan-Haase (2009), additional up-to-date aspects were added

•  Scale: 1 = never vs. 5 = very often

•  Cronbach’s α = .86

•  9 items

•  e.g. “I have deleted unpleasant pictures from my profile.” “I have deleted unpleasant comments of myself.” “I have deleted other’s comments on my profile.” “I have told others to delete pictures that I found unpleasant.”


The predictors

Sociodemographic control factors:

Age

General privacy concern & behaviour (Reips, U.-D., Buchanan, T., & Oostlander, J. ,2008, 2010):

Gender

Attitude Behaviour Technical Protection

Behaviour General Caution

Additional predictors:

privacy concerns in FB (e.g. boyd & Ellison, 2008)

No. of “friends”

Trust (based on Joinson, Reips, Buchanan & Paine-Schofield, 2010):

in “friends” in Facebook


General privacy concern: •  Scale by Reips, U.-D., Buchanan, T., & Oostlander, J. ,2008, 2010) •  Attitude: 16 Items (Cronbach’s α = .88):

•  e.g. “Are your afraid of online identity theft”, “Are you afraid that someone could steal your credit card number online”

•  Behaviour – General Concern: 6 Items (Cronbach’s α = .70): •  e.g. “Do you hide your PIN-code at an ATM”, “Do you read the data security terms and conditions

before you register” •  Behaviour – Technical Protection: 6 Items (Cronbach’s α = .74):

•  e.g. “Do you delete cookies”, “Do you use a pop-up-blocker”

The additional predictors

Specific privacy concerns in Facebook: •  Scale developed based on boyd & Ellison (2008) and Debatin, Lovejoy, Horn &

Hughes (2009) •  Question “Which problems or threats do you see when using Facebook?” •  Scale: 1 = can happen hardly vs. 5 = can happen very easily •  14 Items (Cronbach’s α = .85):

•  Focusing on the major concerns or threats named in the literature: •  e.g. “damaged reputation due to rumors and gossip“; “hacking or identity theft“; “phishing“;

“surveillance-like structures due to backtracking“ “consumer-profiling”


Differences in trust

3,34

2,36

2

2,5

3

3,5

4

trus

t

in "friends" in Facebook Trust: •  Scale: 1 = low trust vs. 5 = high trust

•  8 Items (Joinson, Reips, Buchanan &

Paine-Schofield, 2010): •  Focusing on the major

dimensions of trust: Benevolence, Competence, Reliability, Integrity, General Trust

•  e.g. „The intensions of ... are good“; „... is/are trustworthy“; „... is/are dependable“; „I felt comfortable giving my personal information to ...“

•  Facebook Cronbach’s α = .83 •  „Friends“ Cronbach’s α = .89

F(1) = 297,33; p < .00; η² = 0,52

Important: §  r = .11 (no sig.) è no correlation of the two scales è two independent aspects


No. of “friends“ .00 .00 .16***

Regression analysis - Input

unstandar-dized B SE standardized Beta

Age .02 .02 .05

Gender (male=1; female=2) .09 .26 .02

•  dependent variable: amount of profile information in Facebook •  stepwise regression analysis •  R2 (adj.) = .15

* p < .10, ** p < .05, *** p < .01

Trust – in Facebook .82 .18 .30*** Trust – in “friends“ .32 .14 .13**

Attitude – Privacy Concern -.05 .17 -.02

Behaviour – General Caution -.02 .15 -.01

Behaviour – Technical Protection -.00 .13 -.00

Facebook privacy concerns .18 .19 .07


No. of “friends“ .00 .00 .24***

Regression analysis - Deletion

unstandar-dized B SE standardized Beta

Age -.01 .01 -.06

Gender (male=1; female=2) .27 .12 .14**

•  dependent variable: privacy protection behaviour – deletion of information •  stepwise regression analysis •  R2 (adj.) = .13

* p < .10, ** p < .05, *** p < .01

Trust – in Facebook -.12 .09 -.09

Trust – in “friends“ -.17 .07 -.15** mean = 2.36 !!

Attitude – Privacy Concern .10 .08 .09

Behaviour – General Caution -.02 .07 -.02

Behaviour – Technical Protection .09 .06 .09

Facebook privacy concerns -.06 .09 -.05


Conclusion

The “friends” in Facebook are a new important issues

•  trust in “friends” and trust in Facebook are two independent factors •  trust in “friends” is quite high, while trust in Facebook is very low •  the huge number of “friends” comprises the risk of not being able to predict the

behaviour of all “friends”

Different kinds of trust lead to different kind of privacy protection behaviour

•  low trust in “friends” leads to more protection behaviour in terms of deleting information regarding likes, comments & pictures

•  low trust in Facebook leads to higher withholding of profile information, but has no influence if the information is already in Facebook

Other results:

•  general attitudes about privacy are to abstract and broad to be able to predict specific behaviour; though, specific Facebook concerns to not lead to protection either


Thank you very much for your attention!

Comments and questions can be sent to: Prof. Dr. Christian Bosau

[email protected]

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