“Failure to Notice or Noticing the Failure”

The current challenges of privacy self-management regulations and the inadequacy of notices pose challenges to protecting consumers’ privacy. This study introduces the concept of social contract literacy, blending social contract theory, privacy self-management, media literacy, and self-efficacy to understand consumers’ relationships with digital media and privacy. Using quantitative and qualitative research methods, this research develops a new scale measuring social contract literacy in the contexts of digital media and privacy. This approach bridges the gap between consumer literacy and legal obligations, offering guidelines for practitioners and policymakers to improve privacy protection measures and better understand consumer relationships with online companies.