Abstract

An incredible amount of information is collected about people on a daily basis; information that may be used to represent them elsewhere without their knowledge or control. Giving data out directly to others (e.g., messaging a group photo) or publicly releasing data (e.g., posting photos on social media) is a reflexive action for most digital natives. People making such data disclosure decisions are doing so under conditions of imperfect or asymmetric information about their consequences (Acquisti et al., 2016). Disclosure decisions about co-owned data being made by a group are complex because the people forming the group may have distinct personal privacy preferences that may conflict, contextual factors may shape whether conflicting individual or group privacy preferences guide the decisions, and these decisions are being made with imperfect information about their benefits and risks (Acquisti et al., 2016; Bélanger & James, 2020). Our interest is in how personal preferences (e.g., individual privacy concerns) interact with the contextual decision factors (e.g., perceived benefits and risks, social identity, group cohesiveness) to shape both individual and group decisions to disclose co-owned information (e.g., a group photo). The theory of multilevel information privacy (TMIP) describes how complex privacy decisions can be when information is co-owned (Bélanger & James, 2020). The concepts of “I-“ and “We-privacy” were introduced in TMIP to distinguish between individual and group management of privacy rules and decisions. Specifically, TMIP explains that people in a group may have different personal rule sets (norms) for data disclosure decisions which may be overridden by group norms when particular social identities are salient. Environmental factors such as the location, people involved, format and type of the information, and information ownership perspectives may influence the salient social identity, as well as the privacy norms and privacy calculus used to guide privacy decisions. This means that the salient social identity may be that of a member of a particular group, influencing an individual to consider the norms of that group in making a specific privacy decision, rather than using their own personal identity and norms to guide it. The purpose of this project is to improve our understanding of how groups make decisions to share co-owned information. A series of in-person group experiments (n=47; 18 groups) was carried out in which co-owned information was created and group decisions made regarding disclosure of it. Specifically, a group photo was taken under the guise of creating marketing materials for career fairs, and the privacy decision was whether to contribute the photo to the organization’s stock photo library. Data on personal privacy preferences were collected prior to the experimental sessions, and the groups were encouraged to discuss the group decisions before making them. We will discuss preliminary qualitative and quantitative findings.

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