Enforced Standards Versus Evolution by General Acceptance: A Comparative Study of E-Commerce Privacy Disclosure and Practice

to the present study, and are gratefully acknowledged. The authors alone are responsible for the paper. Enforced Standards Versus Evolution by General Acceptance: A Comparative Study of E-Commerce Privacy Disclosure and Practice in The U.S. and U.K. Conventions as well as standards influence the practice of financial reporting. Reporting standards arise as legislated rules, enforced by the power of law. Conventions evolve over time through trial and practice, and are upheld by socioeconomic rewards and sanctions. Financial reporting in the second half of the twentieth century has been characterized by a preference for legislated standards, and a lack of faith in its evolution as a body of social conventions. Evidence on whether this faith in standards over conventions is justified remains to be marshaled. We present data on privacy practices in e-commerce under the European Union’s (EU’s) formal regulatory regime prevailing in the United Kingdom (U.K.), and compare it to the data from a previous study of United States (U.S.) practices that evolved in the absence of government laws or enforcement