Factors Influencing Millennials’ Privacy Concerns

MU Student research

How often have you stopped yourself moments before pressing the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy accept button? The answer, according to Modul graduate MSc Ludmila Tibulschi, may depend on your age, gender, and nationality, among other factors.

The Internet has dramatically increased the flow of information between organizations and customers, and personal information is treated as a currency for the usage of digital tools and various mobile services. The fact that the process of collection, handling and usage of personal data is almost invisible to users causes various privacy concerns. Modul graduate Ms. Tibulschi is interested in the online privacy trade-off of travelers and the factors influencing millennials’ privacy concerns. Ms. Tibulschi´s study focused on a sample of 105 millennial consumers.

“The link between information privacy concerns and privacy behaviors has been a focus of investigation in various studies. However, the topic of privacy trade-off has not been widely studied in the tourism field” says Ms. Tibulschi. According to Ms. Tibulschi´s findings, consumers are concerned about their privacy to different degrees. They tend to weight the potential risks and potential benefits in order to come up with a trade-off.

“Despite the literature suggesting that innovativeness has a positive influence on the mobile device usage behavior and associated risks with this, it is not possible to conclude that there is a direct relationship between the tourist innovation types and privacy concerns. Constructs such as perceived risk and intention to disclose personal information, however, demonstrated statistically significant relationship with privacy concerns. Millennials’ increased perceived risk leads to higher privacy concerns” says Ms. Tibulschi.

According to Ms. Tibulschi´s study, gender seems to play a significant role when it comes to tourists’ privacy concerns and innovativeness level variables. “Females show tendency for higher privacy concerns than males and are generally more innovative.”

The study also suggests that the constructs of privacy concerns, innovativeness level, and perceived risk vary significantly according to travelers’ nationality. “Consumers from South Africa and Asia demonstrate similar results, having high privacy concerns and reporting the highest level of risk. They also tend to show the highest interest in innovations. [...] South and North Americans on the other hand, display the lowest levels of privacy concerns and risks, in addition to being less excited about new products coming to the market.”

Hotels, travel agencies, tour operators, and other tourism organizations may want to pay attention to Ms. Tibulschi´s research. The findings of Ms. Tibulschi´s paper are useful for tourism service providers and vendors, destination marketing organizations, and technology developers and designers, as the paper highlights the factors which influence travelers’ privacy concerns. ­

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Related subjects at MU Vienna:

BSc in International Management
MSc in Management