No abstract

The information privacy of consumers is an important public policy issue in today's society, and one that businesses, industries, and governments are continuing to struggle with as information technology (IT) innovations create ever-stronger impacts. In this article, we explore consumer information privacy issues and review the results of related prior research. We provide a survey of the literature on information privacy based on our assessment from: (1) the societal and public policy perspective, (2) the business practices perspective, and (3) the individual privacy and consumer behavior perspectives that relate to the disclosure of private information by individuals to firms. From the societal and public policy perspective, we identify a number of research directions that relate to the social welfare implications of personal information surveillance, the safeguards needed at the societal level, and the nature of privacy-enhancing regulations. From the business practices perspective, we suggest other research directions that involve the examination of factors influencing organizational choices of privacy practices. We also offer some ways to discover how organizations can leverage their investments in information privacy. The individual and consumer behavior perspective, in turn, prompts Accounting Information Systems (AIS) researchers to look at the nature of people's beliefs and attitudes about privacy; the ways such attitudes affect their intentions and behaviors; and how individuals' behaviors can be influenced by organizational privacy policies and practices. The main contribution of this article is to understand these issues and identify opportunities for AIS researchers to enrich the current body of knowledge on this critical topic.

Extensive personal information is gathered explicitly or implicitly when a customer interacts with a firm. Significant risks are associated with handling such personal information. Providing protection may reduce risk of misuse or loss of private information, but it imposes some costs on the firm and its customers. Risk is associated with improper handling of sensitive customer information. Profits from e-commerce that are earned when there is improper use of private customer information are subject to lawsuits, restitution and other undesirable outcomes. So a firm will want to ensure appropriate privacy protections are in place to safeguard customer information. We present a profit optimization model for customer privacy protection investments considering the potential value implications that arise. We employ a profit-at-risk approach based on valueat-risk methods from financial economics.