The privacy trade-off as a process of decision-making may also be linked to a theory, developed by Anthony Giddens, known as structuration theory. Norberg’s study showed that behavioural intention is governed by risk, whereas actual disclosure is not (Norberg et al., 2007), as described in a previous section, which can potentially be understood through the application of this theory.
Structuration is a social theory that frames behaviour as a balance between structure and agency, where the structure refers to the rules and resources that shape people’s behaviour, whereas the agency refers to people’s ability to act based on their free choices (Giddens,1984). Giddens uses language as an analogy to rules pointing out that people react strongly when others disrespect the rules of a language. Similarly, people are assumed to meet their social expectations. Resources are the frames of reference where rules are carried out. They can be allocative, establishing control over things (e.g.
someone’s land) or authoritative, establishing command over others (e.g. someone’s social status). Structure is seen by Giddens as a source of constraint on people’s free
choices. In that way the number of choices that are available to people is constrained through structures.
The relationship between agents and structures has been the subject of a long dispute among sociologists. Bourdieu (1977) constructed a theoretical model of social practice in which he introduced the concepts of habitus and field. Habitus expresses the way in which agents develop attitudes and dispositions, but also the ways in which they engage in practices (Webb et al., 2002). In that sense, habitus is embodied in agents and it is an unconscious formation (Adams, 2006). A field is “a structured system of social positions — occupied by either individuals or institutions — the nature of which defines the situation for their occupants [...] a field is structured internally in terms of power relations” (Jenkins,2002). As agents move across different fields, they incorporate into their habitus the structures of those fields. Bourdieu’s theory offers a view in which agents do not really intervene in the way that the world works (Jenkins,2002).
Giddens offered a new approach to this subject. At the core of the theory of structuration lies the notion of duality of structure; structures are the medium for decision making but at the same time they are the outcome of the agents’ decision-making. In Giddens’ own words “social structures are both constituted by human agency, and yet at the same time are the very medium of this constitution”. In that sense structure has a dynamic nature that is reproduced through practice.
Structuration theory suggests three ways that structures become embedded in social interactions:
• Communication of meaning. People make use of interpretive schemes (e.g. a person who wears a white coat is a doctor).
• Use of power. People make use of resources involving structures of domination (e.g.
a person who wears a badge is a police officer and has the authority to exercise certain power).
• Application of sanctions. People make use of societal norms involving structures of legitimation (e.g. people are expected to be formally dressed at a wedding).
According to Giddens, humans are reflexive individuals in the sense that we have dif-ferent levels of consciousness that affect the way we behave in difdif-ferent contexts. In contrast to Bourdieu, reflexivity is an important feature of structuration theory. Gid-dens distinguishes two important levels of consciousness. The first level of consciousness is called discursive consciousness; at this level people are able to reflect and justify their actions and knowledge. The second is called practical consciousness; it includes all the cases where people know how certain things are in practice (knowledge of rules) but cannot describe them in a discursive way. For example, we take for granted that a dog is a dog and a cat is a cat. Practical consciousness enables people to go on with their daily
routines. Through the repetition of people’s routines these structures are continuously recreated (the duality of structure). Therefore, the concept of practical consciousness is principal in structuration theory. At this point a question regarding privacy decision-making is raised; to what extent are privacy decisions part of discursive consciousness and to what extent are they part of practical consciousness?
This theory has the advantage of being a rather abstract theory; as a result it can be integrated into different contexts — although Giddens himself intended it to remain theoretical. Stones (2005) develops an approach called strong structuration theory that overcomes the abstract nature of the theory and places it in situ, and calls for empirical research to be conducted using structuration. “It (structuration) can focus on any set of surface appearances and make our understanding of them richer and more meaningful by elaborating upon the structures and agents involved and placing them in relevant networks of social and historical relations”. In this research we use structuration in attempt to understand the privacy trade-off on the Web.
Giddens’ theory has already been used and expanded to understand the relationship between technology and people. Jones and Karsten(2008) provide an in-depth review of papers in the field of Information Systems that employ structuration. Orlikowski(1992) introduced the “duality of technology”, where technology obtains structural properties:
it is the product of people and it is the people who apply a meaning to it, however when it is used in practice it becomes institutionalised. Adaptive Structuration Theory was also based on the work of Giddens and focused on the relationship between “information technologies, social structures and human interaction” in order to challenge what was perceived as a technocratic view of technology usage (Desanctis and Scott,1994).
Although structuration has been applied to different technology domains, to the best of the author’s knowledge it has not been used in the sphere of privacy on the Web.
With regards to online privacy, structuration theory would suggest that people are con-strained by structures (such as trust or social expectations) when making privacy deci-sions and therefore do not act entirely as free agents. Here, we will go through a number of different examples where structuration could be applied. For example, the constraint could potentially account for the differences between their stated privacy attitudes, and their actual privacy behaviour. An example of such a structure could be the privacy settings that a specific online application applies as standard and every user is expected to follow (establishing a strong norm). At the same time though the privacy settings can be changed, depending on the feedback they received from people’s use of them.
Structuration theory could potentially explain the results of John et al. (2011), who found that a professional looking website raises more privacy concerns than an unpro-fessional site. The change of context had significant impact on the sharing decisions of their participants. A web-based survey on Flickr users showed that community-specific privacy concerns do affect people to choose more restrictive privacy settings, whereas
trust in other members and the community’s information sharing norms decrease pri-vacy concerns (Nov and Wattal,2009). In both studies, the structures that govern the respective applications had an immediate effect on people’s privacy concerns. In the first study through the interpretive scheme participants acknowledged whether these were professional looking websites or not, whereas in the second study the structures of legitimation showed that the sharing norms that govern Flickr expect users to perform certain actions (upload photos in this case).
This research aims to investigate whether there is evidence that indicates that the privacy trade-off can be related to the theory of structuration. In other words, this thesis will explore whether people are influenced by a set of structures when they make privacy decisions that causes them to deviate from their previously stated beliefs and whether those decisions could potential reinforce or create new influential structures.