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Proactive Privacy Practices in the Trend of Ubiquitous Services: An Empirical Study

Privacy is a strategic issue so that much attention has been constantly devoted to information privacy in response to competitive pressure in dynamic marketplace, particularly in the trend of e-business settings. Ubiquitous services (u-services) are recognized as the logical extension of e-/m-services because they can be initiated by e- and further propagated by m-services (Junglas & Watson 2006). In u-services context, customers are always connected seamlessly in context-awareness networks so the higher degree of customized and personalized services can be timely served. Likewise, customers may also well be aware of privacy threats behind that. Consequently, privacy issues are identified as a key hindrance for booming u-services.
While a large body of studies focusing on privacy issues have examined relevant factors influence customer decision making such as customer beliefs (i.e. trust and risk), privacy concerns, the representations of privacy statement, and even the privacy calculus, this study aims to explore a theoretical proactive privacy practice model (PPPM) as a guideline for an e-services provider (ESP) initiating its privacy practices to its customers to enhance voluntary information disclosure. Drawing upon integrative social contracts theory, the proposed PPPM embraced technical and non-technical elements such as human, legal, and economic relevant perspectives, that is, e-services providers¡¦ proactive privacy governance, and customer perceived value and competitive strategies for u-services. An empirical survey was conducted in a B2C e-services context to examine the relationships among these constructs.
The results indicate that there are significant relationships between those three antecedents and disclosure willingness respectively. Meanwhile, the moderating effect of competitive strategies significantly and positively associates with proactive privacy governance and disclosure willingness. These findings not only broaden current knowledge of the disclosure behavior but also allow ESPs to strategically manage privacy and leverage privacy protection for a competitive advantage and identify the strengths and weaknesses of their current privacy mechanisms, guiding them to develop more proactive and prominent privacy practices for extending their businesses to future u-services or u-businesses.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0702111-173201
Date02 July 2011
CreatorsWang, Shu-Ching
ContributorsJen-Her Wu, Feng-Yang Kuo, Chi-Chun Lo, Hsien-Tang Tsai, Chao-Min Chiu
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0702111-173201
Rightsnot_available, Copyright information available at source archive

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