Trust Building Privacy Preferences for Young Adults Visiting Political Campaign Websites

Websites have been used by political campaigns for nearly a decade and a half and the literature has adequately covered human factors aspects of political campaign websites with the help of usability, task analysis, and content analysis studies. However, there is a gap in the literature concerning the relationship between campaign website visitor privacy preferences and trust in the candidate or campaign. This paper presents the idea that user preferences regarding political websites and privacy policies can inform the design process of such websites and impact user trust. The paper provides explicit recommendations for improving campaign website design with the ultimate goal of facilitating trust between young adults and those using a campaign website as a part of their bid for public office. It uses mixed methods to ascertain the privacy preferences among young adult political campaign website users and identifies several factors that have an impact on trust.