GVU's Seventh WWW User Survey Privacy Graphs

Terms and Conditions for Revealing Demographic Information

Notes:

Seeing as people want control of their demographic information (see Opinions of Direct Marketing and clearly specified reasons for not registering with sites (see Reasons For Not Registering, what do users propose as the conditions for their revealing demographic information? As one might expect from these other questions, sites need to clearly specify how the information is going to be used (72.38% Seventh vs. 74.28% Sixth). Additionally, sites need to inform the users what information is going to be collected (54.84% Seventh vs. 56.86% Sixth). Users would be more likely to reveal their information if it was only going to be used in aggregate form (52.11% Seventh vs. 55.53% Sixth), i.e., would not be able to uniquely identify an individual, only characteristics of a group of users. Incentives in the form of a value-added services (38.30% Seventh vs. 41.57% Sixth), access to the contents of the site (32.72% Seventh vs. 35.32% Sixth) and a discount at the site's store (23.68% Seventh vs. 25.87% Sixth) would help encourage user's to part with their demographic information as well.

There is basic agreement on these issue across the strata, with an exception being that the elder generation prefers the data only to be used in aggregate form (56.34% 50+ vs. 48.87% 19-25). This age dependent characteristic also occurred in the Sixth Survey.

Table of Data for All Categories

Terms and Conditions for Revealing Demographic Information	All	Male	Female	USA	Europe	19-25	26-50	50+
Aggregated Only	7302.00 52.11%	5095.00 53.76%	2153.00 48.80%	5909.00 52.77%	453.00 49.83%	1229.00 48.87%	4514.00 53.60%	1067.00 56.34%
Discount at Site s Store	3318.00 23.68%	2374.00 25.05%	920.00 20.85%	2788.00 24.90%	157.00 17.27%	675.00 26.84%	2065.00 24.52%	303.00 16.00%
How it will be Used	10144.00 72.38%	6797.00 71.71%	3283.00 74.41%	8156.00 72.83%	620.00 68.21%	1870.00 74.35%	6165.00 73.20%	1387.00 73.23%
In Exchange for Access to Site	4585.00 32.72%	3253.00 34.32%	1303.00 29.53%	3705.00 33.09%	286.00 31.46%	855.00 34.00%	2749.00 32.64%	603.00 31.84%
Other	2436.00 17.38%	1639.00 17.29%	772.00 17.50%	1982.00 17.70%	111.00 12.21%	400.00 15.90%	1516.00 18.00%	283.00 14.94%
Some Value Added Service	5368.00 38.30%	3736.00 39.42%	1600.00 36.26%	4353.00 38.87%	328.00 36.08%	1001.00 39.80%	3345.00 39.72%	646.00 34.11%
What s Being Collected	7685.00 54.84%	5156.00 54.40%	2477.00 56.14%	6171.00 55.11%	461.00 50.72%	1415.00 56.26%	4637.00 55.06%	1049.00 55.39%
Would Not Give	1124.00 8.02%	766.00 8.08%	344.00 7.80%	903.00 8.06%	79.00 8.69%	192.00 7.63%	610.00 7.24%	154.00 8.13%

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