Ghanaian Consumers Online Privacy Concerns: Causes and its Effects on E-Commerce Adoption

Abstract—Online privacy has gradually become a concern for internet users over the years as a result of the interconnection of customers’ devices with other devices supporting the internet technology. This research investigates and discusses the factors that influence the privacy concerns faced by online consumers of internet services and the possible outcomes of these privacy concerns on the African online market with Ghana being the primary focus. Results from this study indicated that only 10.1% of respondents felt that the internet was safe for purchase and payment transaction in Ghana. However, respondents were willing to shop online if e-Commerce was the only means of getting their products. Respondents also had a high sense of perceived vulnerability and their perceived vulnerability to unauthorized data collection and misuse of personal information could affect Ghanaian e-Commerce platform adoption. The perceived ability of users of e-Commerce platforms in Ghana to control data collection and its subsequent use by other third parties was also found to negatively impact customers’ willingness to wholly transact and share their personal information online. The perceived vulnerability was found to be affected by the high levels of internet illiteracy whiles the perceived ability to control the collection of information and use was influenced by both the internet literacy level as well as the level of social awareness of the Ghanaian internet consumer. Keywords—E-Commerce; technology adoption; online privacy; perceived vulnerability; perceived control I. INTRODUCTION Internet, which is defined as the linkage of networks, is used by a wide variety of people. From its early concept, it was supposed to be used by only the military and the government but now it has now extended in terms of usage to billions of people from all walks of life [1]. Since the inception of the world-wide web, the number of people who have been using the internet has grown exponentially. The internet has further changed a number of ways we do things from how we communicate, to the advancement of research and how businesses are transacted [2]. Thus, the internet has turned the earth planet as we know it into a “global village” whereby information has been made readily available to everyone. The internet is rapidly evolving and two aspects have made the evolution a reality, that is, the breakthrough of mobile technology and the introduction of social networking. The internet never ceases to be the pinnacle of a new beginning and will undoubtedly continue to play an unprecedented role in our life. A report from authors in [3] points out that the number of users of the internet were roughly 16 million in 1995 and in 2017 the number is now 3.732 billion which represents 49.6% of the entire world‟s population. The ever increasing number of users of the internet technology however creates one major concern and that is privacy. UNESCO defines privacy as the right of any citizen to control his or her own personal information and to decide what that information can be used for, thus, to keep or disclose [4]. Privacy invasion comes into the picture when the personal information is being disseminated, used and released without being restrained. With the rapid expansion of the world-wide web, consumers have raised concerns regarding their personal privacy whilst they are either online or even offline. The internet in spite of its numerous advantages has paved way for a cleverly systemized way of collecting data. The online footprints of consumers can easily be tracked in a unique way that the person will not even become aware of it. Virtually every single information about the person stemming from the person‟s interest, preference and some private information can easily be accessible to other third parties for them to use in their own way. Studies done by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) discovered that 90 percent of web sites were gathering at least one type of identifiable information about their users such as name, e-mail address, location, while 57 percent were obtaining at least one type of demographic information, for example, gender and preferences with some websites going to the extent of gatheri

…(Full text truncated)…