Investigating the Determinants of Privacy Information Disclosure in the Online Environment during COVID-19 Pandemic in Malaysia

Chua, Ping Qi (2021) Investigating the Determinants of Privacy Information Disclosure in the Online Environment during COVID-19 Pandemic in Malaysia. Masters thesis, Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology.

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Abstract

The first COVID-19 case was detected in Malaysia on 25th January 2020, it is due to 3 Chinese nationals who had travelled in Malaysia after having close contact with an infected person in Singapore (Azlam, Hamzah, Sern, Mohammad 2020). The number of positive Covid-19 cases fluctuated and inconsistence, it hits the latest highest with 3309 cases on 12 January 2021 (Free Malaysia Today 2020). In order to maintain social distancing and reduce the chances of getting infected, Malaysia government implemented Movement Control Order (MCO) and the Conditional MCO(CMCO) (Prime Minister’s Office of Malaysia 2020; Malay Mail 2020). Other than that, two contracts tracing apps have been developed from the Malaysia Government such as MySejahtera. However, there are around 40% of Malaysia citizen refuse to download the apps as they worried about the disclosure of their privacy information, safety and security issues since it will expose their personal data such as location and health conditions (Codeblue 2020b). According to Sin Chew Daily (2020a), some of the Malaysians unwilling to cooperate by scanning the QR code when arrived at a location; freely fill in the false information in the handwriting records due to worry about the disclosure of their privacy information. These people are the high-risk population that might cause the pandemic become worsen again (Sin Chew Daily 2020a). As the practice of privacy information disclosure on social media application such as contact tracing application are being encouraged by government, people are still worry about their daily activities will get spying and the privacy information will be stolen or leaking. Therefore, this study will investigate the determinants of privacy information disclosure on the online environment during this pandemic in order to identify the efficient solution to solve this problem. In this research, 421 samples are obtained and Gen Z who are aged between 18 to 26 years old will be participated in this research. The research findings showed that perceived risk, perceived benefit, disclose intention, advertisement and compliance behaviour are the determinants who influence the privacy information disclosure during Covid-19 pandemic in Malaysia. However, issue involvement was concluded that it does not moderate the relationship between disclose intention and privacy information disclosure.