The Relationship Between Privacy, Information Security and the Trustworthiness of a Crowdsourcing System in a Smart City

With the growing number of people living in cities, the challenges faced by governments in providing an acceptable standard of service delivery are immense. ‘Smart cities’ is a new and innovative approach that has been formulated over the past few years in order to use current infrastructure and resources more effectively and efficiently. For a smart city to work, large amounts of information must be collected from the citizens, which may cause privacy concerns. Information security influences the perceived trustworthiness of the crowdsourcing system which, in turn, increases the participation of citizens in smart city projects. This paper investigates the relationship between the privacy, information security and perceived trustworthiness of a crowdsourcing system in a smart city. The study made use of a quantitative approach using a survey design. A questionnaire was completed by 361 participants in a public safety project hosted in East London, South Africa. The results indicated there is a positive relationship between the information security in and the perceived trustworthiness of a crowdsourcing system. Therefore, the privacy concerns of citizens making use of a crowdsourcing system can be alleviated by increasing the perceived trustworthiness and the information security of the system.