Politics of Privacy: The Role of Individual Political Views in Consumer Data Privacy Concerns

Today, every choice that is made, from where to shop to what music to listen to, has turned into a reflection of one’s political views and identity. The main purpose of this research is to explore the relationship between an individual’s political views and his or hers attitudes toward the security of personal information in the consumer realm. Two studies were conducted in the form of surveys. The first study aims to measure the consumer’s trust and risk beliefs for a company of a certain size as well as their feelings toward the dimensions of control, collection, and awareness of privacy practices. The second study focuses on consumer attitudes and behaviors post-data breach, again taking into account the size of the firm, as well as their repatronage intentions and beliefs about improper access. Both studies were analyzed with the individual consumer’s political views as a main effect. It was found that political views did not affect how consumers felt about control, collection and awareness beliefs. Risk beliefs were found to be a mediator between political views and intention to reveal information for liberal and extremely conservative consumers. No significant findings for the role of political orientation or firm size in the consumer beliefs and attitudes came from the second study