The effects of ontology-based and password-protected blog access control on perceived privacy benefit and perceived ease of use

Abstract

Purpose

This work empirically evaluates the effectiveness of the novel ontology-based access-control mechanism and the common password-protected access-control mechanism for social blogs. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

The ontology-based access-control scheme is designed to fit two characteristics of blog activities: social relationships and tags. A laboratory experiment is conducted to assess the perceived privacy benefit and perceived ease of use of the two mechanisms.

Findings

Analytical results indicate that, with the ontology-based access-control scheme, users perceive more privacy benefit than with the password-protected access-control scheme. The perceived ease of use with the ontology-based and password-protected access-control systems did not differ significantly.

Research limitations/implications

Cross-boundary collaborations need an appropriate approach to control communication access. Further study is required to evaluate the ontology-based access-control scheme applied in cross-organizational and cross-departmental collaborations.

Practical implications

From a knowledge management perspective, blogs can store personal and organizational knowledge and experiences. The ontology-based access-control scheme encourages knowledge sharing for appropriate persons.

Originality/value

The new ontology-based access-control mechanism can help online users keep secrets from selected people to gain more privacy benefits than the existing password-protected access-control mechanism.

Citation

Liu, C.-L. (2014), "The effects of ontology-based and password-protected blog access control on perceived privacy benefit and perceived ease of use", Kybernetes, Vol. 43 No. 2, pp. 325-340. https://doi.org/10.1108/K-12-2013-0264