Impact of privacy concerns on resistance to smart services: does the ‘Big Brother effect’ matter?

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to provide a better understanding of the factors that explain consumer resistance to smart services from a privacy perspective. To this end, an exploratory qualitative study and a quantitative study were carried out. 653 French consumers answered an online questionnaire regarding smart services in the banking sector. Structural equation modelling was used to test the conceptual model. The findings show that information privacy, the unauthorised secondary use of personal information and perceived intrusion have an impact on consumer resistance to smart services. Moreover, our research highlights the major role of the ‘Big Brother effect’ as an antecedent to these various privacy concerns.

KEYWORDS:

• Smart service
• smart product
• privacy concerns
• resistance
• Big Brother

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the special issue editor and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the earlier versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/.

2. Examples of concerns expressed by consumers but not addressed in this research: economic cost, loss of control, etc.

3. Note that two participants did not clearly express any privacy concerns.

4. https://entreprise.maif.fr/entreprise/pour-une-societe-collaborative/decouvrir-nos-actions/maitriser-les-enjeux-numeriques/chartenumerique.

5. https://www.cnil.fr/fr/les-labels-cnil.