The Privacy Trap of Digital Transformation: The Existence and the Implication

Abstract

This study explores why a developing country may fall into the privacy trap of digital transformation after Covid-19. The privacy trap is that, when the developing country executes its digital transformation policy, the government inevitably compromises their civilian privacy and often have no way of knowing when/why/how the service will use or leak the privacy. To date, little scholarly literature has examined the existence and implication of the privacy trap in a developing country. Therefore, we analyze data from 306 respondents in Taiwan based on descriptive and inferential statistics. The results show the privacy trap exists and may be derived by that the bandwagon effect overriding the effects of privacy concerns on the willingness to provide personal information. These findings implicate that, based on the in-depth expert interview, one possible way but also the biggest challenge to escaping the privacy trap is to transform from the current economic system of cost-oriented labor to the economic system of a risk-oriented education system supporting breakthroughs in science and technology. This study could ultimately contribute to the developing countries to protect their civilian’s privacy when executing digital transformation especially from a digital minority to a digital beneficiary.