Privacy: An experimental approach

Abstract The concept of privacy is both significant and contested, with ongoing philosophical debate about whether it is best understood in terms of non-access or as involving some form of control. This paper advances the discussion by employing experimental philosophy to examine folk intuitions about privacy. Our findings show that these intuitions favor a control-based concept of privacy. Additionally, we show that the type of information at stake influences privacy judgments, indicating that privacy concerns are sensitive to not only access and control but also to informational content. Our results enable us to make progress on the question of how to understand the concept of privacy and calls for a new research agenda that pays closer attention to different informational distinctions.