Mobile User's Privacy Decision Making: Integrating Economic Exchange and Social Justice Perspectives

Recent advances in wireless computing and communication have led to the proliferation of location-based services (LBS). While LBS offer users the flexibility of accessing network services on the move, potential privacy violations have emerged as a contentious issue because details of user identities, movements and behaviors are available to LBS providers. Drawing on the economic exchange and social justice theories, this research addresses privacy issues by examining key mechanisms that can alleviate users’ privacy concerns. A theoretical framework is developed to link three privacy assurance mechanisms (technology control, industry self-regulation, and government legislation) to the individual privacy decision making process. In addition, as the individual privacy decision making is usually dynamic and context-specific, the research model will be tested in three different contexts with three different types of LBS applications (safety, advertising, and social networking applications). This research contributes to a better understanding of the dynamic and dialectic nature of information privacy through a combination of theoretical and empirical research efforts. The interplay between social and technological issues associated with the privacy assurance will be the interests for application developers, service providers and policy makers.