Exploring Consumer Concerns Related to the Internet

This article reviews prior literature to identify eleven potential concerns people may have about the Internet. A survey is conducted to develop valid and reliable multi-item measures for these eleven issues and establish consumers' relative concern for each. Descriptive analyses are then performed to better understand differences in concern across various demographic groups. Results indicate that the general public feels most concerned about the type of online information accessed by children. This is followed by consumer concerns related to several security issues: (1) the potential for a hacker to access their hard drive when they are online, (2) the potential for their credit card information to be intercepted by an unauthorized party, and (3) the threat of unauthorized parties accessing their personal information. Along with security, concerns about online fraud and unsolicited commercial e-mails were also highly rated. Results further indicate that compared to their male counterparts, female consumers are more concerned, particularly with respect to aspects concerning online security including possible occurrence of online fraud, security of online financial transactions, safeguarding one's privacy on the Internet, and third party unauthorized access to the hard drive of one's computer. Finally, our study suggests that respondents who had never made an online purchase were significantly more concerned with many of the online issues compared to those who had previously made online purchases. Implications of these results are discussed from the perspective of both businesses and public policy makers.