EXPRESS: Dynamic personal privacy norms and marketplace experiences in hospitality and tourism settings: Learning from bystanders’ reactance in livestreamed restaurants

The ubiquity of livestreaming in hospitality and tourism settings calls for rethinking privacy concerns and norms along digital visibility. Drawing on reactance theory, this study analyses bystanders as individuals unintentionally included in livestreamed restaurant environments. Based on qualitative interviews with consumers (n=29) and employees (n=31), it identifies three mechanisms: socio-material anchoring, acting-reacting, and integrating, through which individuals negotiate privacy norms. Employees and consumers are conceptualized as bystanders who, despite differing institutional roles, lack control over livestreaming technologies and must negotiate privacy norms in response to unplanned digital visibility within market-mediated service interactions. Findings highlight “dynamic personal privacy norms” as socially enacted and situationally adaptive. Reactance theory is extended to capture its social grounding and constructive role in digitally mediated contexts. By positioning bystanders as active agents and exploring reactance as a socially regulated process, the study brings new theoretical insights on privacy for hospitality and tourism managers confronted to livestreaming.