Privacy Policies and Users’ Trust: Does Readability Matter?

Ermakova, Tatiana; Baumann, Annika; Fabian, Benjamin; Krasnova, Hanna (2014). Privacy Policies and Users’ Trust: Does Readability Matter? In: Americas Conference on Information Systems. Savannah, USA.

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Over the years, a drastic increase in online information disclosure spurs a wave of concerns from multiple stakeholders. Among others, users resent the “behind the closed doors” processing of their personal data by companies. Privacy policies are supposed to inform users how their personal information is handled by a website. However, several studies have shown that users rarely read privacy policies for various reasons, not least because limitedly readable policy texts are difficult to understand. Based on our online survey with over 440 responses, we examine the objective and subjective readability of privacy policies and investigate their impact on users’ trust in five big Internet services. Our findings show the stronger a user believes in having understood the privacy policy, the higher he or she trusts a web site across all companies we studied. Our results call for making readability of privacy policies more accessible to an average reader.

Item Type:

Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Division/Institute:

03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Department of Business Management > Institute of Information Systems
03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Department of Business Management > Institute of Information Systems > Information Management

UniBE Contributor:

Krasnova, Hanna

Subjects:

000 Computer science, knowledge & systems
300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 330 Economics

ISBN:

978-0-692-25320-5

Projects:

[392] The Value of Privacy on Social Media

Language:

English

Submitter:

Alisa Petrova

Date Deposited:

22 May 2015 11:36

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 14:47

Additional Information:

AMCIS 2014 Proceedings. Human Computer Interaction.
Privacy Policies and Users’ Trust: Does Readability Matter? - ResearchGate. Available from: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/262563357_Privacy_Policies_and_Users_Trust_Does_Readability_Matter [accessed May 13, 2015]

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.68895

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/68895

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