Online privacy literacy and users’ information privacy empowerment: the case of GDPR in Europe

Purpose – Research on online user privacy shows that empirical evidence on how privacy literacy relates to
users’ information privacy empowerment is missing. To fill this gap, this paper investigated the respective
influence of two primary dimensions of online privacy literacy – namely declarative and procedural knowledge
– on online users’ information privacy empowerment.
Design/methodology/approach – An empirical analysis is conducted using a dataset collected in
Europe. This survey was conducted in 2019 among 27,524 representative respondents of the European
population.
Findings – The main results show that users’ procedural knowledge is positively linked to users’ privacy
empowerment. The relationship between users’ declarative knowledge and users’ privacy empowerment is
partially supported. While greater awareness about firms and organizations practices in terms of data
collections and further uses conditions was found to be significantly associated with increased users’ privacy
empowerment, unpredictably, results revealed that the awareness about the GDPR and user’s privacy
empowerment are negatively associated. The empirical findings reveal also that greater online privacy literacy
is associated with heightened users’ information privacy empowerment.
Originality/value – While few advanced studies made systematic efforts to measure changes occurred on
websites since the GDPR enforcement, it remains unclear, however, how individuals perceive, understand and
apply the GDPR rights/guarantees and their likelihood to strengthen users’ information privacy control.
Therefore, this paper contributes empirically to understanding how online users’ privacy literacy shaped by
both users’ declarative and procedural knowledge is likely to affect users’ information privacy empowerment.
The study empirically investigates the effectiveness of the GDPR in raising users’ information privacy
empowerment from user-based perspective. Results stress the importance of greater transparency of data
tracking and processing decisions made by online businesses and services to strengthen users’ control over
information privacy. Study findings also put emphasis on the crucial need for more educational efforts to raise
users’ awareness about the GDPR rights/guarantees related to data protection. Empirical findings also show
that users who are more likely to adopt self-protective approaches to reinforce personal data privacy are more
likely to perceive greater control over personal data. A broad implication of this finding for practitioners and E-businesses stresses the need for empowering users with adequate privacy protection tools to ensure more
confidential transactions.