Explicitness of Consequence Information in Privacy Warnings: Experimentally Investigating the Effects on Perceived Risk, Trust, and Privacy Information Quality

Utility that modern smartphone technology provides to individuals is most often enabled by technical capabilities that are privacy-affecting by nature, i.e. smartphone apps are provided with access to a multiplicity of sensitive resources required to implement context-sensitivity or personalization. Due to the ineffectiveness of current privacy risk communication methods applied in smartphone ecosystems, individuals’ risk assessments are biased and accompanied with uncertainty regarding the potential privacy-related consequences of long-term app usage. Warning theory suggests that an explicit communication of potential consequences can reduce uncertainty and enable individuals to make better-informed cost-benefit trade-off decisions. We extend this design theory to the field of information privacy warning design by experimentally investigating the effects of explicitness in privacy warnings on individuals’ perceived risk and trustworthiness of smartphone apps. Our results suggest that explicitness leads to more accurate risk and trust perceptions and provides an improved foundation for informed decision-making.