Researchers at the Centre for Social Informatics published an article in the journal Electronic Commerce Research and Applications

Jošt Bartol, Dr. Vasja Vehovar, and Dr. Andraž Petrovčič, researchers at the Centre for Social Informatics, in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Michael Bosnjak (University of Trier, Germany), published an original research article "Privacy concerns and self-efficacy in e-commerce: Testing an extended APCO model in a prototypical EU country" in Electronic Commerce Research and Applications.

Online shopping is a widespread practice, yet a certain segment of internet users in Slovenia does not shop online. Alongside socio-demographic characteristics and personality traits (e.g., introversion) of internet users, past research has identified (low) internet skills and privacy concerns as important factors of online shopping. However, the literature currently lacks a comprehensive and integrated analysis of these factors.

The authors addressed this gap by extending an existing conceptual model on online privacy. They positioned privacy concerns and online shopping self-efficacy as mediators between internet users’ socio-demographic characteristics and personality traits on the one hand and their use of the internet for shopping on the other hand. The analysis of the empirical model (N = 3,736) showed that self-efficacy is an important predictor. Higher self-efficacy leads to lower privacy concerns and a higher likelihood to shop online. Importantly, the results showed that individuals with different personalities have different strategies to cope with privacy concerns. Overall, the study provides important conceptual and empirical insights into the decision-making processes of internet users regarding online shopping.

The study was conducted as part of Jošt Bartol's Young Researcher fellowship, funded by the Slovenian Research Agency of the Republic of Slovenia, and co-funded by research projects J5-3100, J5-8233, J5-9334, NI-0004, and research programme P5-0399.