Can Informational Privacy as a Value be Reliably Measured as a Dimension of Privacy When Studying Differences in Behaviour in German and Romanian people

This study explores the concept of informational privacy as a universal human value within Schwartz’s theory of values, in a cross-cultural context. Informational privacy can be understood as the control about the extent to which personal information is shared towards others (Burgoon 1982). Through a questionnaire this study examines informational privacy among German and Romanian participants, the scope is expanded by also assessing convergent, predictive, and discriminant validity. In general, it can be said that the scale was partially validated. Findings showed a positive correlation between the human value “self-direction thought” and informational privacy, confirming conceptual similarities and convergent validity. Information privacy also has an effect on privacy protective behaviours such as managing location data settings on mobile devices, this was used to show predictive validity. No significant gender differences were found, however German participants displayed a higher score on informational privacy when compared to Romanians, this relates to discriminate validity. This study supports the definition of privacy as a multidimensional concept. Results indicate that informational privacy can be reliably measured as a distinctive dimension of privacy.