Read Or Skip:A Research On Users’ Tendency Of Avoiding Privacy Clauses

Behind the huge dividend of personal data use,the contradiction between users’ attention and concern about information privacy and enterprises’ demand for user data is becoming more and more serious.As the way to standardize the collection and usage of user data,privacy clauses are no longer a simple way to provide information but become an important bridge to standardize enterprises and obtain effective authorization from users.However,previous researches have shown that privacy policies are often ignored by users,which seriously threatens the effectiveness of informed consent procedures.Therefore,studying how to take effective measures to reduce this avoidance behavior is an important issue to be considered by the government,enterprises and users,and is also one of the hot topics of academic research.Based on this,this paper explored the cognitive mechanism and intervention mechanism of conventional avoidance behavior through three experimental studies.First,users’ conventional avoidance phenomenon in the context of information system was verified by manipulating the interface design elements.After that,the cause of users’ avoidance behavior were explored.Finally,the internal mechanism of avoidance behavior were revealed from the perspective of dual-processing theory.In this paper,neuroscientific methods and experimental methods were used to study the process of visual avoidance directly and intuitively through eye movement data,and the internal cognitive mechanism was revealed through the process dissociation procedure.Experimental studies have found that when the system make it easy for users to ignore privacy policies,such as not displaying them by default or offering users a frustrating “all or none setting”,users tend to “bury their heads in the sand” to protect themselves from suspicious bad news,even if the solution is simply a click or more attention.However,threat cues and task compulsion are important factors that affect users’ avoidance behavior.When presented with clues about threats related to privacy disclosure,the avoidance behavior could be reduced and users choose to disclose their personal privacy more carefully.Meanwhile,when task compulsion is lower,users will avoidance behavior could also be reduced.Furthermore,the internal mechanism of this influence process is that when the threat cue is high,the occurrence probability of analytical processing becomes higher,while when the threat cue is low,the occurrence probability of automatic processing becomes higher.When the degree of threat clue increases,the probability of analytical processing increases.Among them,task compulsion negatively moderates this influence process.When the degree of task compulsion increases,the occurrence probability of analytical processing decreases.And when the user’s cognitive process passing through the analytical route,the lower their privacy disclosure.While,the user’s cognitive process passing through the automatic route,the higher their privacy disclosure.Combining the conclusions above,this article transitions from the perspective of user behavior to the inner mechanism of cognitive process,exploring in-depth the antecedents,processes,and consequences of user’s routine avoidance of consent clauses in privacy policies.It also complements the research framework under the background of the consent clauses in privacy policies,and develops the dual-process theory in relevant studies of privacy field.Moreover,from the perspective of the government,enterprises,and users,this paper proposes some management advice in order to help application developers to improve the design elements of privacy policies.It provides views for optimizing the decision-making environment for informed consent clauses,and serves as a basis for proposing and regulating the privacy policy.