Preocupação com a privacidade, confiança e disposição dos consumidores a fornecer informações on-line no contexto do Big data

Abstract

With the increasing number of people connected to Internet and the emergence of technological convergence, enterprises have the opportunity to obtain competitive advantages working online. This happens because the Internet is a channel where these companies reach an increasing number of consumers, mainly through the promotion of personalized offers and services. In addition, the emergence of new technological tools, which provide techniques even more advanced of data mining, has favored the interpretation of an extensive volume of complex data that makes up what currently is known as Big Data. By means of this technological phenomenon, companies have access not only to conventional data, but also to social data, generated by the flow of activities that consumers perform online, whether through transactions, searches on websites or through using social media. However, at the same time that the information generated by these data favors consumer individualization, rises a problematic about its privacy and security. In this way, this study sought to answer the following question: "which factors affect consumer behavior regarding the informational privacy in the Big Data context?”. Thus, the aim was to identify the factors that affect consumer's informational privacy concern and its consequences on trust and on willingness to provide their personal information on the Internet. Through a literature review, it was proposed a research model to measure the relationship between the constructs of privacy concern, trust and willingness to provide information online, considering the expertise in using the Internet, the perceived risk and the informational control as antecedent factors. In addition, it sought to identify moderating effects of personality, cultural values, Internet usage and knowledge about Big Data. The data were collected through an online survey, with a sample of 864 Brazilian respondents from all regions of the country. By means of Exploratory Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling techniques, four of the six hypotheses elaborated in this study were confirmed, showing that the perceived risk and informational control determine privacy concern, which affects trust and willingness to provide information online, being only expertise in using the Internet excluded from the model. Although no moderating effects were identified, personality, cultural values and Internet usage behavior were significantly related to privacy concerns and the willingness to provide information. It was also possible to observe that women and people with lower income show higher levels of risk perception and have a greater desire for informational control. In general, this study contributes to consumer behavior literature by exploring factors that affect consumers' willingness to provide their personal data when they perceive threats to their informational privacy, since Brazilian studies that analyze these aspects are scarce. Besides, it presents managerial contributions, highlighting the importance of observing how privacy concerns affect consumers' attitudes toward business, rather than focus just on purchase intention. This allows mangers to promote improvements in privacy policies and transparency, and, consequently, in trust relationship between consumers and businesses.