Experimental Studies on Knowledge-to-action Gap to Comply with Information Ethics

Abstract

If learners cannot form an intention to take an appropriate action with knowledge about information ethics, it cannot be said that the learners have acquired the knowledge in essence. In the present study, the two experiments are conducted to examine if the knowledge-to-action gap can be confirmed by means of paper-and-pencil tests consisting of knowledge and intention tasks for high school students. The knowledge task is to inquire about appropriate behavior regarding the correct knowledge, while the intention task is an inquiry whether the respondents consciously select the action or not. The experiments 1 and 2 indicated that participants take unethical behaviors even though they have appropriate knowledge. In addition, the experiment 2 indicated that the participants guessed the number of classmates with unethical behavior is higher than the actual number. These results demonstrate the importance of education for information ethics, which needs to be carefully designed to bridge the gap between knowledge and action to comply with information ethics.