Shopping for Privacy on the Internet

Abstract

Privacy laws in the United States rely heavily on consumers' ability to protect their personal information in the marketplace. Consumers are expected to make decisions about sharing their personal information in exchange for various benefits (e.g., information on web sites, shopping bargains, access to databases). This paper examines behavioral science research that explains why consumers are not likely to do this efficiently, and why a market for information privacy online is destined to fail.

Keywords: consumer, privacy, information privacy, behavioral economics, online privacy, e-commerce, decision making, bounded rationality