Contrasting Two Surveillance Contexts According to Acceptance

Surveillance technologies are used all over the world for various reasons. In urban environments, surveillance technologies are predominantly used for detecting or preventing crimes. Simultaneously, an increasing number of technologies are used for medical monitoring at home, but also at clinical facilities, and at public environments for assuring patients’ medical safety. An intensive policy discussion about perceived advantages (especially increasing safety) and perceived barriers (in particular the invasion of privacy) comes along with the use of surveillance technologies. In this paper, it is examined where and for which contexts the use of surveillance technologies is accepted and under which conditions safety or privacy is perceived as more important. We investigate the acceptance of surveillance technologies for medical and crime surveillance scenarios using a conjoint analysis approach including four relevant aspects: location of surveillance, increase in safety, invasion of privacy, and the applied camera type. Results show both, context independent findings as well as context-sensitive findings: e.g., for crime surveillance, the location is most important followed by the trade-off between privacy and safety, while these three factors are of similar importance for medical surveillance. From a practical viewpoint, the findings might contribute to a differentiated surveillance policy in cities.