Researchers at the Centre for Social Informatics published an article in Cyberpsychology

Jošt Bartol, Dr. Michael Bošnjak, Dr. Vasja Vehovar, Dr. Gregor Čehovin, and Dr. Andraž Petrovčič published an original research article “Big Five personality dimensions and disintegration as antecedents of vertical and horizontal internet privacy concerns” in Cyberpsychology.

Personality traits are one of the factors that determine people’s threat appraisals. This also applies to an individual's perceptions of privacy threats in online environments. Past studies have often examined the associations between the Big Five personality traits and privacy concerns. These studies indicate that more neurotic, open, agreeable and conscientious individuals are more concerned about their own privacy on the internet, while more extraverted persons are less concerned.

In the recently published study, the authors extend the existing literature in two ways. On the one hand, they distinguish between vertical and horizontal privacy. The former describes privacy relationships between individuals and institutions and the latter between individuals. On the other hand, they complement the Big Five traits by also examining the role of disintegration—a personality trait that indicates an individual's tendency to perceive connections among unrelated events.

The analysis, carried out on a probability sample of 797 internet users from Slovenia, showed differences in the associations between Big Five personality traits and vertical and horizontal privacy concerns. At the same time, disintegration emerged as a significant factor of privacy concerns, with more disintegrated individuals being more concerned about their online privacy.

The study highlights the need to distinguish between vertical and horizontal privacy concerns and shows the important role of disintegration in individuals' perceptions of online privacy. The paper thus opens several avenues for further research.

The study was conducted as part of Jošt Bartol's Young Researcher fellowship and co-financed by research projects J5-3100 (Evaluating Probability and Nonprobability Online Panels) and J5-50159 (Assessing and Modelling Unit Nonresponse Bias in Probability-Based Web Surveys), as well as the research programme P5-0399 (Internet Research).