Acceptance of Internet Content Filters: An Empirical Study

Content filters empower users to make choices about what can be downloaded from the World Wide Web. At home, parents can restrict what their children can and cannot see on the Internet. This can protect the young web surfers from unpleasant experiences. These tools allow the parents to understand electronic content by means of open and objective content labels. Web surfers may be unwittingly exposed to suggestive and explicit content. Many organizations across the globe, such as ICRA and GBDe, are working on content rating systems and software filters for the Internet. Generally, simple filters are bundled with common browsers. People are not motivated to buy commercial filters with more functionality. Also, there are few studies investigating a consumer's willingness and intention to adopt these tools. This paper presents an exploratory study of the acceptance of Internet content filters in publicly accessed computers. The relationship between demographic factors, such as gender and age, and perception factors, such as severity of Internet problems, are examined. Results show that the acceptance of blocking filters is significantly related to demographic factors and perceptions of the Internet. We discuss implications of the findings, from both the academic and applied perceptive.