It is more than personal: Development and validation of a multidimensional privacy orientation scale

• We found four distinct dimensions of privacy attitudes.
• User segments are privacy advocates, privacy individualists, privacy indifferents.
• Users who value others’ privacy are less likely to invade informational privacy.
• Privacy individualists use social network sites for satisfying voyeuristic curiosity.
• Reciprocating disclosure is more likely for advocates than for individualists.

This study summarizes the development and validation of a multidimensional privacy orientation scale designed for measuring privacy attitudes of Social Network Site (SNS) users. Findings confirm the existence of four dimensions: (1) belief in the value of “privacy as a right”; (2) “other-contingent privacy”; (3) “concern about own informational privacy” and (4) “concern about privacy of others.” Moreover, a segmentation of SNS users based on these attitude scores reveals three types of users: (1) privacy advocates, who are concerned about both their own and other people’s privacy; (2) privacy individualists, who are concerned mostly about their own privacy, and (3) privacy indifferents, whose score on all dimensions are lower than other segments. The results indicate that the four privacy orientation dimensions and three user segments predict key differences in terms of privacy protective behavior, information disclosure, and viewing personal information of others.