Reasons For Not Registering
Notes:
- From this survey, it has been established that people falsify information of online
registrations with some regularity and that online community very seriously values it's
anonymity. This question attempt to understand why people resist online registration.
The most widely cited reason for not registering is that the terms and conditions of
how the collected information is going to be used is not clearly specified (70.15%).
User also feel very strongly that revealing the requested information is not worth being
able to access the site (69.95%). Thus, while the foremost problem of terms and conditions
of user can be easily rectified, the latter problem of making the trade-off between
demographic collected and accessing a site is not as straight forward (we address this issue
of possible solutions in
Terms and Conditions for Revealing Demographic Information). An equally difficult
issue is building trust between entities.
Over 62% report that they do not trust the collecting site. Efforts that attempt to help
ensure the data privacy standards of sites, like E-Trust may be able to help alleviate this
lack of trust.
- Turns out that the time it takes to complete the form is a factor (38.9%), but not as
significant as the others. Much of the remaining difficulties reside in the type of information
collected, with 45.33% not registering because of postal mail requirements, 30.74% because of
name requirements, and 21.99% email requirements. Thus, proposals that call for business cards
to be built into the browser and protocols which would enable them to be easily deposited at sites
is not the cure-all for this problem but will help somewhat.
Table of Data for All Categories
| Reasons for Not Registering |
All |
Male |
Female |
USA |
Europe |
19-25 |
26-50 |
50+ |
| Always Register |
560.00 7.44% |
317.00 6.28% |
226.00 10.02% |
471.00 7.74% |
25.00 5.92% |
104.00 7.72% |
283.00 6.41% |
77.00 8.84% |
| Don t Trust |
4682.00 62.24% |
3295.00 65.26% |
1248.00 55.34% |
3800.00 62.48% |
228.00 54.03% |
797.00 59.12% |
2800.00 63.42% |
539.00 61.88% |
| Not Worth Risk |
4961.00 65.95% |
3464.00 68.61% |
1367.00 60.62% |
4071.00 66.94% |
261.00 61.85% |
798.00 59.20% |
3063.00 69.38% |
602.00 69.12% |
| Other |
1042.00 13.85% |
702.00 13.90% |
314.00 13.92% |
857.00 14.09% |
45.00 10.66% |
195.00 14.47% |
598.00 13.54% |
102.00 11.71% |
| Requires Address |
3410.00 45.33% |
2258.00 44.72% |
1042.00 46.21% |
2796.00 45.97% |
128.00 30.33% |
619.00 45.92% |
1981.00 44.87% |
373.00 42.82% |
| Requires Email |
1654.00 21.99% |
1130.00 22.38% |
451.00 20.00% |
1319.00 21.69% |
70.00 16.59% |
305.00 22.63% |
955.00 21.63% |
182.00 20.90% |
| Requires Name |
2312.00 30.74% |
1470.00 29.11% |
746.00 33.08% |
1880.00 30.91% |
82.00 19.43% |
379.00 28.12% |
1360.00 30.80% |
275.00 31.57% |
| Terms |
5277.00 70.15% |
3616.00 71.62% |
1508.00 66.87% |
4261.00 70.06% |
290.00 68.72% |
902.00 66.91% |
3186.00 72.16% |
625.00 71.76% |
| Time |
2926.00 38.90% |
2161.00 42.80% |
689.00 30.55% |
2355.00 38.72% |
190.00 45.02% |
558.00 41.39% |
1775.00 40.20% |
261.00 29.97% |
For more information or to submit comments:
send e-mail to www-survey@cc.gatech.edu.
GVU's WWW Surveying Team
Graphics, Visualization, & Usability Center
College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-0280