Exploring Smart Device Privacy: An Examination of Factors Affecting User Concerns, Protection, Satisfaction with Privacy Defense, and Need for Regulations

Smart devices—Internet-connected electronics that collect, interact, and share data with other devices and users—have benefits that coincide with privacy threats from smart devices collecting and sharing information. Applying multiple regression analysis and the privacy calculus theory, we analyzed 500 survey responses from U.S. smart devices that we categorized as communication and information, entertainment, health and wellness, convenience, and home security devices. We identified four dimensions of smart device privacy—privacy concern, privacy protection behavior, satisfaction with privacy defense, and need for regulation—and found smart device factors and privacy factors significantly and differently influence perceptions of smart device privacy. Among smart device factors, device use and extrinsic motivation are associated with privacy protection behaviors. Among privacy factors, influences of privacy literacy were found from all privacy measures. Privacy literacy and privacy fatigue were associated with need for regulation and satisfaction with privacy defense from manufacturers and policymakers.