Privacy versus willingness to disclose in e-commerce exchanges: The effect of risk awareness on the relative role of trust and control

The Internet is increasingly being used as a medium to collect information for consumer profiling. However, attempts at data collection face potential difficulties due to consumers' unwillingness to provide personal information. To explore the social and psychological issues underlying consumers' privacy concerns, this paper adopts an interpretative approach. Participants took part in long qualitative interviews through repeated e-mail exchanges. Interview data were combined with insights from the literatures on self-disclosure, sociology, and consumer research in a grounded theory analysis. The analysis indicates that perceived risk and awareness of information collection/extraction are associated with a shift in concerns from issues of trust to issues of control. Risk awareness reduces the level of trust and increases the demand for control and rewards complicating the relationship between the retailer and the consumer. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.