Corresponding Author Affiliation*: Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Iasi, Romania

Abstract:

Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) led to some substantial changes to the overall user experience, one of it being the usage of pop-ups for cookie consent. One issue that emerged from this practice is the constant interruption of the users while they are browsing websites. The purpose of this paper is to determine how those pop-ups are perceived by the regular user, using the concept of elaboration likelihood, that states that people can process information in 2 different ways, either centrally (carefully thinking about the information) or peripherally (attitudes are based on superficial elements). We used 3 dimensions for measuring elaboration – Interest, Awareness and Cognitive Engagement. We conducted a Confirmatory Factor Analysis and the results were used for predicting the habit of changing the default settings of the cookie consent pop-ups and for correlation check with other variables. We found out that Cognitive Engagement is not a significant variable for predicting the behaviour of changing the defaults, while Interest and Awareness about the subject are significant predictors. The main implications of this study lead to a broader discussion about this practice and makes us wonder if the pop-up is the best solution to ask for cookie consent.

Keywords: GDPR, Cookie Consent, User Experience, Usability, Pop-Ups, Elaboration Likelihood Model, Data Privacy