‘Okay google, what about my privacy?’: User's privacy perceptions and acceptance of voice based digital assistants

Conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) backed Alexa, Siri and Google Assistants are examples of Voice-based digital assistants (VBDA) that are ubiquitously occupying our living spaces. While they gather an enormous amount of personal information to provide bespoke user experience, they also evoke serious privacy concerns regarding the collection, use and storage of personal data of the consumers. The objective of this research is to examine the perception of the consumers towards the privacy concerns and in turn its influence on the adoption of VBDA. We extend the celebrated UTAUT2 model with perceived privacy concerns, perceived privacy risk and perceived trust. With the assistance of survey data collected from tech-savvy respondents, we show that trust in technology and the service provider plays an important role in the adoption of VBDA. In addition, we notice that consumers showcase a trade-off between privacy risks and benefits associated with VBDA while adopting the VBDA such technologies, reiterating their calculus behaviour. Contrary to the extant literature, our results indicate that consumers' perceived privacy risk does not influence adoption intention directly. It is mediated through perceived privacy concerns and consumers’ trust. Then, we propose theoretical and managerial implications to conclude the paper. •Voice-based digital assistants (VBDC) pose the biggest concern for the privacy.•We examine the influence of privacy concerns related constructs on the adoption of VBDA.•Trust in technology and the service provider plays an important role in the adoption of VBDA.•The study also shows privacy calculus behaviour regarding VBDA adoption.•There is a mediated influence of perceived privacy risk on adoption intention.