Consumers desire privacy, but their actions often seem to conflict (privacy paradox). Prior research focused on situations where privacy-decisions are focal (e.g., choosing passwords), recommending smoothing frictions or heightening attitude salience via contextual cues to address these inconsistencies. However, in many situations (e.g., shopping), even when consumers face privacy-relevant decisions (e.g., exchanging one’s email for discounts), privacy decisions are not part of the focal task. For these situations, we propose that thoughts about privacy are crowded out by task-related thoughts, even when encountering contextual cues that should trigger privacy thoughts. Across four studies, our findings suggest that thoughts about privacy, assessed by open-ended and indirect measures, are scarce and dwarfed by thoughts about the focal task. Furthermore, contextual cues (e.g., marketer requests for information, browsing situation) alone were generally insufficient to generate spontaneous thoughts about privacy. However, in combination with close-ended measures, contextual cues generated moderate levels of privacy-related thoughts.

To do our jobs as designers and marketers entering the privacy space, we seek a more human-centered understanding of the needs that privacy serves. The scholarly study of privacy has historically held information at the center, focusing on how data are collected, processed, or retained. While this framing has been valuable for legal and technical discussions, a need is growing to understand privacy through a human-centric lens, especially as robust privacy practices prove to be a market differentiator for products and brands. Industry practitioners typically rely on academic psychology to identify unmet needs and align with human nature, but we found it necessary to fill this gap in the privacy literature. Drawing on our research on social conversations, international surveys, qualitative interviews, and cultural studies, we observed five basic privacy needs that we review here. Hoping to spark further research and support organizations who are doing business differently by taking a more human-centered view of privacy, we argue that laypeople experience privacy as an enabler of their needs to control what they own, what spaces they inhabit, what choices they make with their lives, what relationships they have, and what identities define them.

The authors explore reciprocity norms (equity, fairness, honesty, respect, and trust) and the assumption that they exist in privacy communication around digital exchanges, yet question whether they are evident to consumers. Using a phenomenological approach, depth interviews illuminate consumer perceptions of these norms. Findings reveal that in digital exchanges, consumers experience artificial choice: they desire or require access to services but face high risk and as a result they make concessions, including conceding expectations of reciprocity norms. Consumers respond by rationalizing these compromising behaviors and engaging in a lackadaisical approach regarding privacy decision making. Ultimately, consumers prefer humanization and meaningful transparency in data exchange. Through a lens of relationships and reciprocity norms, this research offers a nuanced approach to how companies and consumers might negotiate privacy concerns through what the authors term “tiered” transparency.

People commonly post content that is about others, for example, when they upload photographs of friends or tag family members in written posts. This article reviews the antecedents and outcomes of posting about others and proposes social mindfulness as a means of decision making that might enable people to avoid negative outcomes from online sharing (e.g., friends feeling betrayed). Social mindfulness entails being thoughtful of others and is enabled by attention and perspective taking. In the context of online postings, social mindfulness involves directing attention to content, taking the perspectives of the others involved, and making decisions that are thought to align with others’ preferences. Two preregistered studies supplemented this conceptual work. One established the prevalence of the phenomenon, showing that nearly half of people’s posts contain information about others. The second demonstrated that being socially mindful predicted being less likely to post content that others might object to sharing.

Financial services firms often offer digital support tools to help consumers make better financial decisions. These tools depend on consumers’ disclosure of privacy-sensitive personal information to generate accurate advice. This study investigates the dual effects of increased perceived privacy risks and the induction of positive affect when consumers use online customer portals. In three experiments (total N=3,346), we explore the impact of placing digital financial support tools in personal customer portals versus public website sections on consumer information disclosure. We demonstrate that while personal customer portals increase consumers’ perceived privacy risks, they also promote feelings of positive affect, which override privacy concerns and enhance willingness to share personal information. These results underscore the complex interplay between consumer privacy concerns and consumer affective responses in digital support tool design, and consumer decision making in the financial domain.

With the increasing amount of consumer data, concerns over the seizure of data are a significant issue in contemporary digital society. While existing marketing literature has predominantly focused on firm–consumer interactions, it has paid scant attention to how consumers perceive government collection, access, and use of their data. Using the case of the worldwide WhatsApp data policy crisis, we theorize why and how consumers legitimize government data seizure. Drawing on netnographic data from Turkish consumers on three digital platforms, we identify three key themes: embracing the inevitable, safeguarding national interests, and politicizing privacy risks. Our research extends existing literature by incorporating consideration of the government, a key market actor, and by uncovering the interplay between political ideology, market politics, and data privacy. We also contribute by revealing consumers’ multilevel consumer privacy benefit-risk assessment and the role of political logic in this assessment.

Firms often ask customers to divulge personal information. Two common strategies to encourage disclosure—emphasizing consumer benefits and highlighting data security measures—rely on communications that may backfire. This research examines an alternative strategy to increase disclosure—restructuring how data requests are presented. Drawing on categorization theory, we argue that grouping data requests into distinct categories (vs. presenting them as an uncategorized list) can make firms seem more professional, thereby increasing consumers’ perceptions of data security and willingness to disclose. This effect emerges even with uninformative categories but not when all the requests are placed into a single category. Our findings identify categorization as a simple tool that firms can deploy to increase voluntary disclosure of personal information. However, our work also raises ethical questions about data elicitation methods and how to better protect consumer privacy.

Disclosure is the cornerstone of the notice and choice model of digital privacy. In theory, notice and choice frameworks empower individuals to manage their privacy via autonomous decisions. In practice, digital consumers are inundated with terms of use (TOU) agreements and other legal notices. Among the most prolific texts in human history, TOUs govern privacy and digital rights at societal scale, yet are notoriously difficult to understand. To aid comprehension, some platforms provide plain language summaries of legal terms, but how such efforts spill over to influence consumer perceptions remains unclear. In five experiments that merge legal and marketing perspectives, we find that plain language TOU summaries increase perceived brand trustworthiness via subjective fluency but decrease perceived trustworthiness via objective understanding. Additionally, we demonstrate a boundary condition based on trait trust tendencies. We conclude by discussing marketing, public policy, and legal implications.