Understanding the Security in Privacy-Security Concerns: A Theoretical and Empirical Examination

Even though Privacy concerns and security concerns are acknowledged as separate constructs, many studies argue that they are related or, even worse, confused. Hence, this study clarifies the nuances between privacy and security concerns, and identifies the dimensions which pertain purely to the security side. It develops a scale to measure those “security dimensions”. It shows that unique dimensions relate to the transmission aspect of security concern. Hence we call this scale Internet Users Information Transmission Security Concern (IUITSC) scale. This study draws upon a sample of 270 Internet users to validate and empirically examine the factor structure of the scale. The results suggest that IUITSC may be represented as a second-order factor structure rather than a set of four first-order factors. The study argues that assurance could be the overarching theme which ties the first-order dimensions of security concern into the higher order IUITSC construct. The paper most importantly, theoretically and empirically establishes the distinctness of the IUITSC scale with privacy concern dimensions. Together the IUITSC and privacy concern dimensions cover the entire gamut of privacysecurity concerns.