Conceptualizing Information Privacy Concern in Low-Income Countries: an Ethiopian Language Instrument for Social Network Sites Context

Today’s organizations rely on continuous information inflow. Not surprisingly, Social Networking Sites (SNS) have expanded to Low-Income Countries (LICs) to solicit more information from individuals but increased information privacy concerns (IPC). Therefore, there are an increasing number of studies investigating the determinants of IPC. However, peculiarities of LICs (e.g., culture, infrastructure, income) suggest that the findings from studies of developed countries may not apply to LICs. Unfortunately, the lack of locally well-validated instruments limits conducting such studies in LICs. This paper addresses this gap by rigorously developing an Amharic SNS-IPC instrument. After a thorough literature review, customization of previous measures to the context of SNS, and translation of the instrument to the Amharic language, a field survey was conducted to test the instrument. The PLS analyses indicate good reliability, convergent, discriminant and nomological validity for the new instrument. The research answers the IS discipline’s call for more privacy-related validated instruments.