The Influence of Trust and Privacy Risk-Taking on User Acceptance of Electronic Services that Collect Personal Information

The goal of this study was to assess factors underlying user value judgments of services that collect personal data. A survey was used to present 6 scenarios describing various entertainment and mobile services, and to ask about the sensitivity of different types of data and about respondents’ tendencies to take privacy risks and trust authorities to protect privacy. The results showed that respondents with greater trust and privacy risk rated the services more highly, and their ratings were less affected by adding data collection to the services. However, their average ratings of the services with data collection were more highly associated with data sensitivity than with service value. The results have implications for companies that use new channels, such as the Internet and mobile devices, to better understand their customer base.