Information-Privacy Concerns and Protection Behaviors of Customer: Focusing on the Effect of Individual Factors

With the emphasis on balancing the use of personal information with privacy protection, there has been a lot of academic discussion on the factors that influence privacy concerns and the consequences of those concerns. However, there are relatively few studies that examine the impact of various individual factors of customer on privacy concerns and behaviors from the perspective of consumers, who are the subjects of personal information. Furthermore, the role of privacy knowledge level has not been sufficiently discussed. Therefore, this study aims to examine the relationship between information privacy concerns and protective behavior based on the APCO model and the theory of motivation to protect. To this end, we examined differences in information privacy concerns and privacy protection behaviors according to personal factors such as gender, age, legal knowledge of privacy laws, education, and income, and tested whether there is a moderating effect between concerns and protection behaviors. The results showed that information privacy concerns were higher among women and those with high legal knowledge, and privacy protection behaviors were higher among those with low age, high legal knowledge, high education, and high income. We also found that legal knowledge had a moderating effect that strengthened the relationship between concerns and protection behaviors. In other words, research results shows that the interaction between personal factors plays an important role in consumers' privacy-protective behavior. This study contributes to the understanding of existing findings on the impact of personal factors on privacy concerns and protective behaviors and extends existing theories.