Heuristic versus Systematic Processing of Online Privacy Policy - Research Paper Example

Heuristic versus Systematic Processing of Online Privacy Policy Grade (13th, Dec. Empirical studies that applied the HSM under various contexts, suggested that taking into account the combination effects of influential cues or factors during information process, would provide clear, comprehensive and rational explanation of the subsequent judgments. For instance, Chang’s study (2004), used country of origin as a heuristic cue, and considered the mediate effects of message ambiguity and product involvement, on the way consumers’ process advertising message, and how consumers evaluate the advertised product. Chaiken & Maheswaran (1994) found that task importance, and the ambiguous level of the message, could modify subjects’ information processing mode. Todorov, Chaiken, & Henderson (2002) also contend that in the systematic mode of processing, issue-relevant thoughts mediate perceivers’ information judgment, and in the heuristic mode, heuristic cues should have a direct effect on attitudes (p. 197). Ratneshwar and Chaiken (1991) also suggested that, the combination effects of contextual prior knowledge and information exposure, would vary individuals’ attitude towards a novel product. Therefore, it is rational to consider more than one variable in the HSM application research. Information Evaluation Information evaluation serves as the core consequence after processing persuasive or risk disclosure information. In our study, information evaluation refers to individual’s acceptance of privacy policy provided by online media. We choose acceptance as an indicator of information evaluation for two reasons. First, most of the website services are offered to users on the premise of acquiring the agreement toward the privacy policy. Secondly, the websites obtain users’ agreement by different ways. For some websites, users will be asked to click ‘agree’ the websites’ terms and conditions which include the privacy practice, when they are creating an account (e.g., Facebook). For some other websites, their privacy policies state that they have rights to use any cookies that users leave in their website. By default, any user’s activities on those websites could be regarded as a form of agreement of their privacy policies (Miyazaki, 2008). Measures Background Characteristics Participants reported their level of education (1=Freshman, 2=Sophomore, 3=Junior, 4=Senior). Previous research found that most privacy policies require at least a reading level of second- or third-year college student. Therefore, we measure education to ensure that all participants have the capacity for systematically process the privacy policy content. (Milne, Culnan, & Greene, 2006). Blocking Variables The HSM posits that, except situational factors, individual difference factors should exert effects on the judgmental impact of the heuristic cues (Chen & Chiaken, 1999). According to the HSM, individual difference factors such as task importance or existing attitude, should take into account individuals’ engagement of information processing and judgment formation (Chaiken & Maheswaran, 1994). Therefore, the current study will control of some of these measures included in the analyses, as blocking variables (Keppel, 1991). Therefore, none of these factors was confounded with an experimental condition by chance, which limits the potential influence of these extraneous factors on the observed differences (Shan, Kwak, Schmierbach, & Zubric, 2004). In the current study, task importance was measured by asking participants a question about how seriously they took the task of evaluating the privacy policy they were presented with. According to previous research, trust could also impact individuals’ information processing and judgment (Koh & Sundar, 2010). Three dimensions of trust (Institutional trust, dispositional trust and trust in the online media) were measured by twenty-five items, adapted from McKnight, Choudhury, and Kacar (2002). The Ceronbach’s alpha of the combined measure was 0.90. Gender was included in the blocking variable such as participants’ sex, might induce a potential source of systematic error in the dependent variables. (Ratneshwar & Chaiken, 1991). All covariate measures except gender were administered on a 5-point Likert-type scale. Results Participants Among the 167 participants, 105 of them, constituting (63.9%) were senior, 46 (27.5%) were junior, thirteen (7.8%) were sophomore and three (1.8%) were freshman. Participants were randomly assigned to four manipulated conditions. Heuristic Processing Hypothesis 1 posits that, in the absence of privacy seal, individuals are more likely to engage in heuristic processing, when exposed to a privacy policy presented by a familiar social media website. The presence of heuristic cues on information processing style was tested within a 2x2 between groups ANCOVA, which compared the effects of privacy seal (presence, absence) and familiarity (familiar, unfamiliar) on the heuristic processing of privacy policy. The multivariate main effects of privacy seal and familiarity were insignificant. The interaction effects were, however, significant on the heuristic processing of privacy policy: F (1,164)=5.83, p Read More