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ABSTRACT his paper explores privacy concerns of consumers in the area of healthcare services. Concerns with privacy can affect consumers’ search, choice and consumption of those services. This study compares US and Canadian citizens’ concerns with privacy and perceptions of issues surrounding various medical conditions or treatments. We postulate that concerns are a function of the health condition treated and three individual characteristics: age, race and gender. Furthermore, the nature of the individual’s healthcare insurance coverage might affect his or her concern for privacy. If a person has healthcare coverage, he or she might be willing to barter privacy for saving money.

The particular governmental healthcare system an individual enjoys is important since it creates expectations of the ambient level of privacy one will experience. Though other individual characteristics like demographics, psychographics, and purchasing behaviors might play a role in the concern for privacy, they were not examined in this study.