International Journal of Human Research and Social Science Studies

Precision marketing ecosystems depend on continuous extraction of user consent, yet empirical research documents a growing phenomenon of consent fatigue in which users routinely click “I agree” without reading privacy notices, eroding the substantive voluntariness upon which consent-based personal data regulation rests. This paper examines coffee brands—particularly their loyalty apps, mobile ordering platforms, and IoT-enabled personalization systems—as a paradigmatic site where high-frequency, low-stakes data collection interactions generate repeated consent requests and amplify fatigue. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship from law, human–computer interaction, consumer behavior, and library and information science (LIS), the paper develops a three-layer framework of consent failure: structural (dark patterns and interface design), psychological (privacy fatigue and cynicism), and educational (privacy literacy deficits). It argues that regulatory enforcement and corporate self-regulation alone cannot compensate for the consumer-side information asymmetry, and proposes that library information literacy education—reconceptualized as privacy literacy instruction—can serve as a corrective mechanism by building consumers’ procedural knowledge, critical evaluation skills, and behavioral self-efficacy. The paper concludes with a four-module pedagogical curriculum and discusses boundary conditions, limitations, and directions for future empirical research.

consent fatigue, privacy fatigue, precision marketing, personal information compliance, coffee brands, library information literacy, privacy literacy, consumer protection

1. Bandara, R., Fernando, M., & Akter, S. (2020). Explicating the privacy paradox: A qualitative inquiry of online shopping consumers. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 52, 101947. 
2. Boerman, S. C., Strycharz, J., & Smit, E. G. (2023). How can we increase privacy protection behavior? A longitudinal experiment testing three intervention strategies. Communication Research, 50(2), 179–208. 
3. Cofone, I. N., & Robertson, A. Z. (2018). Consumer privacy in a behavioral world. Hastings Law Journal, 69(5), 1243–1290.
4. Cooke, L. (2018). Privacy, libraries and the era of big data [Editorial]. IFLA Journal, 44(3), 173–177.
5. Elias, E. (2021). Is Starbucks undergoing a transition into the FinTech industry? [Undergraduate thesis].
6. Filipczuk, D. (2022). Consent mechanisms in privacy engineering [Doctoral dissertation, University of Southampton]. ePrints Soton.
7. Fulkerson, D. M., Ariew, S. A., & Jacobson, T. E. (2016). Revisiting metacognition and metaliteracy in the ACRL Framework. Communications in Information Literacy, 10(1), 21–35.
8. Galli, F., Lagioia, F., & Sartor, G. (2022). Consent to targeted advertising. European Business Law Review, 33(4), 567–590.
9. Gray, C. M., Santos, C., Bielova, N., Toth, M., & Clifford, D. (2021). Dark patterns and the legal requirements of consent banners: An interaction criticism perspective. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1–18). ACM. 
10. Habib, H., Li, M., Young, E., & Cranor, L. F. (2022). Okay, whatever: An evaluation of cookie consent interfaces. In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1–21). ACM. 
11. Hartman-Caverly, S., & Chisholm, A. (2020). Privacy literacy instruction practices in academic libraries: Past, present, and possibilities. IFLA Journal, 46(4), 389–408. 
12. Hartman-Caverly, S., Chisholm, A., & Glenn, A. (2023). Digital shred: Case study of a remote privacy literacy collaboration. College & Research Libraries, 84(2), 245–268. 
13. Lim, S., van Osselaer, S. M. J., Goodman, J. K., Fuchs, C., & Schreier, M. (2024). The Starbucks effect: When name-based order identification increases customers’ store preference and service satisfaction. Journal of Retailing, 100(3), 456–474. 
14. Machuletz, D., & Böhme, R. (2020). Multiple purposes, multiple problems: A user study of consent dialogs after GDPR. Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, 2020(2), 451–468. 
15. Nouwens, M., Liccardi, I., Veale, M., Karger, D., & Kagal, L. (2020). Dark patterns after the GDPR: Scraping consent pop-ups and demonstrating their influence. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1–13). ACM. 
16. Richards, N. M., & Hartzog, W. (2019). The pathologies of digital consent. Washington University Law Review, 96(2), 235–302.
17. Soe, T. H., Nordberg, O. E., Guribye, F., & Slavkovik, M. (2020). Circumvention by design: Dark patterns in cookie consents for online news outlets. In Proceedings of the 11th Latin American Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 1–8). ACM. 
18. Song, R. (2023). Allocating data protection duties the Chinese way. Washington International Law Journal, 32(1), 123–168.
19. Svirsky, D. (2019). Why are privacy preferences inconsistent? (Harvard John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business Discussion Paper No. 81). Harvard Law School.
20. Tang, J., Akram, U., & Shi, W. (2021). Why people need privacy? The role of privacy fatigue in app users’ intention to disclose privacy: Based on personality traits. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 34(5), 1453–1474. 
21. Thomas, S. (2022). Online privacy protection and public libraries: A review of contemporary research. Public Library Quarterly, 41(3), 245–265. 
22. Tian, X., Chen, L., & Zhang, X. (2022). The role of privacy fatigue in privacy paradox: A PSM and heterogeneity analysis. Applied Sciences, 12(19), 9702. 
23. Tiwari, I. D., Kumari, C., Kumar, A., & Shrivastava, A. (2024). Data privacy and targeted advertising: Marketing compliance under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 in the global regulatory landscape. Canadian Journal of Marketing Research, 10, 1–20.
24. Umar, M. (2021). Privacy literacy and digital media literacy: Can digital media literacy be used in protecting user’s online privacy? Journal of Media and Communication Studies, 13(1), 1–10.
25. Utz, C., Degeling, M., Fahl, S., Schaub, F., & Holz, T. (2019). (Un)informed consent: Studying GDPR consent notices in the field. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (pp. 973–990). ACM. 
26. Veale, M., & Zuiderveen Borgesius, F. (2022). Adtech and real-time bidding under European data protection law. European Journal of Risk Regulation, 13(3), 545–568. 
27. Zhou, M. M. Z., Qu, Z., Wan, J., Wen, B., Yao, Y., & Lu, Z. (2024). Understanding Chinese internet users’ perceptions of, and online platforms’ compliance with, the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL). In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM.