Enforced Standards Versus Evolution by General Acceptance: A Comparative Study of E‐Commerce Privacy Disclosure and Practice in the United States and the United Kingdom
比较英国在欧盟正式监管下的电子商务隐私实践与美国在无政府法律或执法下的实践，发现英国监管并未改善隐私披露或实践，反而抑制了网络保证服务市场的发展，且两国消费者仍易受少数网站垃圾邮件侵害。
ABSTRACT We present data on privacy practices in e‐commerce under the European Union's formal regulatory regime prevailing in the United Kingdom and compare it with the data from a previous study of U.S. practices that evolved in the absence of government laws or enforcement. The codification by the E.U. law, and the enforcement by the U.K. government, improves neither the disclosure nor the practice of e‐commerce privacy relative to the United States. Regulation in the United Kingdom also appears to stifle development of a market for Web assurance services. Both U.S. and U.K. consumers continue to be vulnerable to a small number of e‐commerce Web sites that spam their customers, ignoring the latter's expressed or implied preferences. These results raise important questions about finding a balance between enforced standards and conventions in financial reporting. In the second half of the 20th century, financial reporting has been characterized by both a preference for legislated standards and a lack of faith in its evolution as a body of social conventions. Evidence on whether this faith in standards over conventions is justified remains to be marshaled.