In the digital era, it is increasingly important to understand how privacy decisions are made because information is frequently perceived as a commodity that is mismanaged. The preponderance of privacy literature focuses on individual-level information privacy concern and personal self-disclosure decisions. We propose that a more versatile multilevel description is required to enable exploration of complex privacy decisions that involve co-owned (i.e., group) information in increasingly sophisticated digital environments. We define the concepts of group and individual information privacy, “we-privacy” and “I-privacy” respectively, as the ability of an individual or group to construct, regulate, and apply the rules for managing their information and interaction with others. We develop the theory of multilevel information privacy (TMIP), which uses the theory of communication privacy management and the developmental theory of privacy as foundations for a social rule-based (i.e., normative) process of making privacy decisions that evolve over time with experience. The TMIP contributes to the privacy literature by drawing from prominent social psychology theories of group behavior (i.e., social identity and self-categorization theories) to explain how privacy decisions can be made by individuals or groups (i.e., social units) or social units acting as members of a particular group. We contend that technology complicates the privacy decision-making process by adding unique environmental characteristics that can influence the social identity assumed for a particular privacy decision, the estimation of the cost-benefit components of the privacy calculus, and the application and evolution of the norms that define the rules for information and interaction management. We discuss the implications of the TMIP for information systems research and provide a research agenda.

中文翻译：

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数字时代的多级信息隐私管理理论

在数字时代，了解信息的决策方式变得越来越重要，因为信息经常被视为管理不善的商品。隐私文献主要集中在个人层面的信息隐私问题和个人自我披露决策。我们建议需要一种更加通用的多级描述，以在复杂的数字环境中探索涉及共同拥有（即组）信息的复杂隐私决策。我们将群体和个人信息隐私的概念分别定义为“我们-隐私”和“我-隐私”，是指个人或群体构建，规范和应用规则来管理其信息以及与他人互动的能力。我们开发了多级信息隐私（TMIP）理论，它使用通信隐私管理理论和隐私发展理论作为基于社会规则（即规范性）的决策过程的基础，该决策过程将随着经验的发展而逐步发展。TMIP通过借鉴群体行为的著名社会心理学理论（即社会身份和自我归类理论）为隐私文献做出贡献，以解释个人或群体（即社会单位）或行动的社会单位如何做出隐私决定。作为特定组的成员。我们认为，该技术通过添加独特的环境特征（可能会影响针对特定隐私决策所假定的社会身份），对隐私演算的成本收益组成部分进行估算，从而使隐私决策过程复杂化，以及定义信息和交互管理规则的规范的应用和演变。我们讨论了TMIP对信息系统研究的影响，并提供了研究议程。