The Study Of Consumer Privacy Concerns And Adoption Behavior In Electronic Commerce

The E-commerce has introduced a significant wave of change since 1990s.In China, The tremendous process of information communication technology along with the great change of social economy, such as the expansion of service economy, the diversification of market demand, the establishment of social networks,demonstrate the important role of E-commerce. China's E-commerce industry has shown signs of scale and emerged several new features,such as mobility (ubiquity), virtuality, personalization and extreme data.Despite these new features can provide a higher degree of personalization, which can bring tremendous benefits and values to customers,the advancement of technologies, openness of network access and personalization of services also raises concerns of consumers because their personal information not only can be constantly accessed and continuously tracked, but also can be easily disseminated and possibly used in ways unknown to them. Therefore, consumers'privacy concerns have become the major obstacle in their adoptions of E-commerce applications.This study explores the antecedents and consequences of consumer privacy concerns and empirically investigates the influence to consumer adoption intentions in E-commerce.The results of the study not only help to increase understanding of consumers'adoption in E-commerce, but also provide practical implications to organizations and regulatory institutions.It has a great theoretical and practical significance to increase the comprehensive competence for China's E-commerce industry and economic and social development.This study is organized as follows:(i) to introduce the research background of consumer privacy concerns and adoption behavior, and identify the research questions;(ii) to review the literature of E-commerce, consumer privacy and consumer behavior, and develop a theoretical framework of consumer privacy concerns, including the definitions of variables and the hypothesis of the relationships;(iii) to develop the scale of the antecedents of consumer privacy concerns in E-commerce and test its reliability and validity; (iv) to conduct empirical analysis,test the hypothesis in the theoretical framework from the aspects of antecedents,dimensions and consequences of consumer privacy concerns.The survey research method of behavior research and scientific method proposed by Wallance(1971)are applied to this study. Firstly, all the issues and phenomenon are observed and inducted to propose research contents and scope. Secondly, based on the theories of consumer behavior and privacy concerns, the concepts are analyzed and the hypotheses reflecting the relationship among concepts are set up.Lastly, the data are collected by surveys and analyzed in advanced statistical programs,such as SPSS15.0v, AMOS7.0v, Lisrel8.53v, to verify the hypotheses, answer the questions raised in the theoretical framework, and lead to future research on this issue.There are three valuable results from theoretic study and empirical analysis.Firstly, this study demonstrates how the antecedents of privacy concerns influence consumer privacy concerns and their dimensions. From the aspect of Information Sensitivity, higher Information Importance perception and the anxiety of Personality Factors trigger consumer privacy concerns.From the aspects of Information Receiver, the more consumers'concern about the Reputation and Privacy Seals,the more concern about privacy; however Familiarity with abundant experience helps to reduce consumers'privacy concern.From the aspect of Information Usage, Consumers have more concerns on Privacy Perception and Information Maintenance indicate that they are more concern about privacy, Security Protection Perception which is found not influence privacy concerns significantly needs to be verified and analyzed afterwards.Secondly, this study verifies the valance framework of privacy concerns and perceived benefit. The result of Structural Equation Model shows that Perceived Benefit and Trust positively influence consumers' adoption Behavior Intention, while privacy concerns via Perceived Risk impact adoption Behavior Intention indirectly and negatively.Lastly, this study examines the influence of demographic factors on consumers'privacy concerns,using the scale of IUIPC,a construct made up of three dimensions:collection, control and awareness respectively. Age, Education, Income and Experience are found to have a definite influence on consumers'privacy concerns.Older and more sophisticated consumers are found to be more concern about information Control and Awareness rather than Collection.The more educated consumers are found to be more concern about information Control,Collection and Awareness.Consumers with higher incomes have higher privacy awareness but not significantly influence information Control and Collection. No support is found for a relationship between gender and consumers'privacy concerns.