| Summary: | The expansion of e-commerce has made consumer privacy issues more salient and
pressing. Previous studies of online commerce have indicated that limited confidence in
privacy protection has been a major problem impeding the growth of e-commerce.
The United States Federal Trade Commission developed the Fair Information Practice
Principles in its 1998 report to congress to ensure that the collection and use of personal
information is conducted fairly, and to provide sufficient privacy protection for
consumers. The Federal Trade Commission's core principles are notice, choice, access,
and security.
The purpose of this study is to develop an instrument to measure the degree to which
online entities adhere to fair information practice principles, from the perspective of
consumers. The instrument development process included three stages: item creation,
card sorting, and instrument testing. First, we generated 25 items based on the definitions
of the four fair information principles. Then, we asked eight judges to sort the items into
various categories, and according to the card sorting results, we deleted some poor items
from the scales. Finally, we conducted an online survey to test the instrument. We applied
factor analysis and other validity and reliability analyses to the survey data, resulting a
validated 23-item, five-scale instrument. This instrument can be used to evaluate the
privacy protection practices of online entities, and to judge from the consumers'
perspective if these practices are fair and provide sufficient protection.
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