Unpicking the privacy paradox: can structuration theory help to explain location-based privacy decisions?
Abstract
Social Media and Web 2.0 tools have dramatically increased the amount of previously private data that users share on the Web; now with the advent of GPS-enabled smartphones users are also actively sharing their location data through a variety of applications and services. Existing research has explored people's privacy attitudes, and shown that the way people trade their personal data for services of value can be inconsistent with their stated privacy preferences (a phenomenon known as the privacy paradox). In this paper we present a study into privacy and location sharing, using quantitative analysis to show the presence of the paradox, and qualitative analysis in order to reveal the factors that lie behind it. Our analysis indicates that privacy decision-making can be seen as a process of structuration, in that people do not make location-sharing decisions as entirely free agents and are instead heavily influenced by contextual factors (external structures) during trade-off decisions. Collectively these decisions may themselves become new structures influencing future decisions. Our work has important consequences both for the understanding of how users arrive at privacy decisions, and also for the potential design of privacy systems.
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Research focusing on smartphone behavior and the use of mobile applications in particular remains scarce.
“while research focusing on smartphone behavior and the use of mobile applications in particular remains scarce (Deuker, 2010;Oetzel and Gonja, 2011;Zafeiropoulou et al., 2013).”
From Putting the privacy paradox to the test: Online privacy and security behaviors among users with technical knowledge, privacy awareness, and financial resources (2019) · cites this paper as Zafeiropoulou et al., 2013
Users do not act according to their previously stated privacy preferences when benefits outweigh privacy concerns.
“When talking about location based applications, Zafeiropoulou et al. (2013) found that users to not act according to their previous stated privacy preferences as benefits of such apps outweigh privacy concerns.”
From Putting the privacy paradox to the test: Online privacy and security behaviors among users with technical knowledge, privacy awareness, and financial resources (2019) · cites this paper as Zafeiropoulou et al. (2013)
The decision to share geolocation is heavily influenced by contextual factors such as the function of the app and trust in the app.
“Besides, the decision to share geolocation is heavily influenced by contextual factors such as the function of the app (Lin et al., 2012) and trust in the app (Zafeiropoulou et al., 2013).”
From The privacy and control paradoxes in the context of smartphone apps (2022) · cites this paper as Zafeiropoulou et al., 2013
Some studies interested in decisions in the context of mobile applications have focused more on risks and not given as much attention to the relation between the degree of importance of different apps and the decision to disclose personal information.
“However, some studies interested in decisions in the context of mobile applications have focused more on risks and not given as much attention to the relation between the degree of importance of different apps and the decision to disclose personal information (e.g., Felt et al., 2012;Egelman et al., 2013;Zafeiropoulou et al., 2013;Buck et al., 2014).”
From The privacy and control paradoxes in the context of smartphone apps (2022) · cites this paper as Zafeiropoulou et al., 2013
From our data from Study 2, it can be concluded that granting access to the location might be seen by the user as taking advantage of desirable location-sensitive features of a Weather app, as well as photo storage can be an advantage of a Messaging app.
“For example, from our data from Study 2, it can be concluded that granting access to the location might be seen by the user as taking advantage of desirable location-sensitive features of a Weather app (Egelman et al., 2013;Zafeiropoulou et al., 2013), as well as photo storage can be an advantage of a Messaging app.”
From The privacy and control paradoxes in the context of smartphone apps (2022) · cites this paper as Zafeiropoulou et al., 2013
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References 32 · Cited by 53
- Authors
- Zafeiropoulou, A. M., Millard, D. E., Webber, C., & O'Hara, K.
- Affiliations
- University of Southampton (GB)
- University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 5th Annual ACM Web Science Conference
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2013-05-02
- Pages
- 463-472
- OpenAlex
- W2124950324
- Cited by
- 53
- References
- 32
- Citations by year
- 2025: 4 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 2
- FWCI
- 6.24
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- ACM Web Science Conference (WebSci) (publishedVersion)
- ePrints Soton (University of Southampton) (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- Research Councils UK (EP/G036926/1)
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/J017728/1)
- University of Southampton (EP/G036926/1)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Privacy, Security, and Data Protection
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Privacy-Preserving Technologies in Data
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Keywords
- privacy paradox, location sharing, privacy attitudes, privacy decision-making, structuration theory, personal data sharing, smartphones
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