Privacy needs on today’s Internet differ from the information privacy needs in traditional e-commerce settings due to their focus on interactions among online peers, and not just on transactions with an online vendor. Peer-oriented online interactions have critical implications for an individual’s virtual presence and self-cognition. Yet, existing conceptualizations of internet privacy concerns solely focus on the control of personal information release and on online interactions with online vendors. Drawing on the theory of personal boundaries, this study revisits the theoretical foundation of online privacy and proposes a multidimensional peer privacy concern construct, that focuses on privacy violations from online peers. We term this new construct “peer privacy concern” (PrPC) and define it as the general feeling of being unable to maintain functional personal boundaries in online activities as a result of online peers’ behaviors. This construct consists of four dimensions: (1) a reconceptualization of information privacy concern to also reflect privacy concerns with respect to peers’ handling of self-shared information and with respect to peer-shared information about one’s self; and (2) three new dimensions that tap into the arising privacy needs from virtual interactions (i.e., virtual territory privacy concern and communication privacy concern) as well as from the need to maintain psychological independence (i.e., psychological privacy concern). These new dimensions, which are rooted in the theory of personal boundaries, are prominent privacy needs in online social interactions with peers. However, they are missing from previous privacy concern conceptualizations. Scales for measuring this new construct are developed and empirically validated.

中文翻译：

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同行隐私问题：概念化和衡量

当今 Internet 上的隐私需求不同于传统电子商务环境中的信息隐私需求，因为它们关注在线同行之间的交互，而不仅仅是与在线供应商的交易。面向同伴的在线互动对个人的虚拟存在和自我认知具有重要意义。然而，现有的互联网隐私问题概念仅关注个人信息发布的控制以及与在线供应商的在线互动。本研究借鉴个人边界理论，重新审视网络隐私的理论基础，提出了一个多维的同伴隐私关注结构，重点关注网络同伴的隐私侵犯。我们将这种新结构称为“同行隐私问题”（PrPC），并将其定义为由于在线同行的行为而无法在在线活动中维持功能性个人边界的一般感觉。该结构由四个维度组成：（1）对信息隐私问题的重新概念化，以反映对同伴处理自我共享信息和关于自己的同伴共享信息的隐私问题；（2）三个新维度，从虚拟交互（即虚拟领域隐私关注和通信隐私关注）以及保持心理独立的需要（即心理隐私关注）中挖掘出隐私需求。这些根植于个人边界理论的新维度，是与同龄人在线社交互动中突出的隐私需求。但是，以前的隐私问题概念化中缺少它们。用于测量这种新结构的量表已开发并经过经验验证。