This paper aims to examine the extent to which Generation (Gen) Z’s perceptions of subjective norms and self-efficacy influence their privacy-protection behaviors. Individuals with high privacy concerns tend to perform more protection-oriented behaviors, while individuals with high perceptions of technology-use benefits tend to perform less protection-oriented behaviors. And because Gen Z is particularly attracted to digital innovation, they may be particularly susceptible to focusing on the technology-use benefits over concerns for privacy. This creates a challenge for organizations as Gen Z continues to make up a large percentage of the workforce, when it comes to motivating employees to capitalize on the benefits of technology use while also minimizing the risks to the organization. Social norms are a construct that may help balance the tension between privacy concerns and perceived benefits in users’ disclosure of personal information and adhering to organizational privacy-protection behaviors.
To investigate these issues, the theoretical model was empirically tested using 365 questionnaire responses collected from students enrolled in business courses at a medium-sized university in the western USA. Due to the focus of the research, which depends upon social media use, the respondents who reported that they do not use social media were eliminated from the sample and the study. The empirical analysis was performed using structural equations modeling.
Consistent with previous research, this study found that perceived benefits had a negative influence on privacy-protection behaviors and privacy concerns have a negative relationship with information disclosure. As hypothesized, subjective norms and privacy-related self-efficacy were significantly and positively related to privacy-protection behaviors.
These results extend our understanding of factors that influence security-related behaviors to “digital natives” (i.e. Gen Z), a generation that is continuing to make up a larger percentage of the workforce. Findings provide valuable evidence for promoting information security-related subjective norms to Gen Z employees through such actions as nudging (Ioannou et al., 2021), with the goal of increasing information security policy compliance.
