Who Quits Privacy-Invasive Online Platform Operators? A Segmentation Study with Implications for the Privacy Paradox

Abstract

Although individuals are concerned about their privacy, it is increasingly difficult to withdraw from privacy-invasive platform operators and keep activities private. IS research has identified the privacy paradox as a phenomenon and information asymmetries as one critical reason behind users’ dichotomy between privacy concern and behavior. However, prior work neglected to investigate (1) the characteristics of consumers caught in the privacy paradox, (2) new areas of information asymmetries such as knowledge about alternative services, and (3) new privacy-decision processes such as quitting privacy-invasive platform operators. To close these gaps, we conducted a representative segmentation study of Google and its services across five countries guided by the theory of planned behavior. Our results identify three clusters and indicate that the privacy paradox is only prevalent in two of them. Consumers in these two clusters lack knowledge about data integration, data usage, and alternative services.