BackgroUnd
Smart homes collect large amounts of personal data of the inhabitants. The collection of this data by companies and governments is also called dataveillance. This can affect how privacy is experienced in the home, potentially leading to changes in the behaviors of the inhabitants such as avoiding having sensitive conversations in rooms with smart devices collecting audio data. The lowering of valuable behavior in the house in response to privacy risks has been called the chilling effect.
In this project, you examine the chilling effect, and develop and test the effect of an intervention to increase protective behaviors, while limiting the chilling effect. You will do this by developing a survey with open and closed questions.
Research questions
Potential questions are:
1. Are people worried about dataveillance and does the chilling effect take place?
2. Does risk perception explain protective action?
3. Does a warning increase risk perception and protective action?
4. Can we increase protective action while limiting the chilling effect?
TYPE OF Research
Survey study with closed and open questions
Keywords
Smart home, privacy, risk protection, intervention,
INFORMATION
Please contact Steven Watson (s.watson@utwente.nl) when you are interested in this assignment.
Literature
Strychartz and Segijn (2024) Ethical side-effect of dataveillance in advertising: Impact of data collection, trust, privacy concerns and regulatory differences on chilling effects. Journal of business research, 173, 114490. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.114490
Strychartz and Segijn (2023) Chilling Effects as a Result of Corporate Surveillance in Digital Communication: A Comparison Between American and Dutch Media Users. International Journal of communication, 18. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/19999