The effect of online privacy literacy on online privacy valuation and online privacy protection behaviour among Pakistanis

Understanding people’s privacy behaviour and privacy valuation is complex. A contradiction between the actual behaviour of the people and their stated preferences is found in the literature, and it is called the privacy paradox. People also differ in their data valuation. They do a risk-benefit calculation in their minds while exchanging information with others. People’s lack of knowledge about privacy has an effect on their mental risk-benefit model. In this thesis, we examined the effect of online privacy knowledge on online privacy valuation of 5 different data types and online privacy protection behaviour among Pakistanis through an online survey. We observed that people’s valuation for the data type we call “personal data”, which includes data directly describing the person, such as name, age, date of birth, and others, is related to their online privacy knowledge. With increasing online privacy knowledge, people are willing to pay a higher amount for the deletion of “personal data” type from online platforms. However, no significant correlation between online privacy knowledge and online privacy protection behaviour was found. There was no correlation between online privacy concerns and online privacy behaviour either.