Social Norms, Self Control, and Privacy in the Online World

Abstract

This chapter explores ways in which human limitations of rationality and susceptibility to temptation might affect the flow of personal information in the online environment. It relies on the concept of “willpower norms” to understand how the online environment might undermine the effectiveness of social norms that may have developed to regulate the flow of personal information in the offline world. Finally, the chapter discusses whether legal regulation of information privacy is an appropriate response to this issue and how such regulation should be formulated in light of tensions between concerns about self-control and paternalism.

An extended version of this chapter will be published as Privacy, Rationality, Temptation, and the Implications of Willpower Norms (forthcoming Rutgers Law Review, 2005).