Online Privacy Concerns Of Indian Consumers

Abstract

This paper describes an empirical study that investigates the factors that influence consumers’ online privacy concerns and their outcomes in the rapidly growing Indian online market. Indian consumers’ online privacy concerns are found to be positively impacted by their perceived vulnerability to unauthorized gathering and use of personal information, and negatively impacted by their perceived ability to control the manner in which their personal information is collected and used online. The consumers’ perceived vulnerability is negatively affected by their level of Internet literacy and their perceived ability to control the collection and use of information. In turn, the perceived ability to control information collection and use is positively influenced by both the Internet literacy level and the social awareness of the consumer. The privacy concerns of Indian consumers are found to negatively impact both their willingness to provide personal information to Websites, and their willingness to engage in e-commerce transactions.  The implications of the findings for Websites targeting the Indian audience are discussed.