Locus of Control and Location Privacy: An Empirical Study in Singapore

Privacy concerns are particularly salient for Location-Based Services (LBS), because LBS could potentially associate the lifestyle habits, behaviors, and movements with a consumer's personal identity. Drawing on psychological control literature, we conducted an experiment to test: i) whether the presence of privacy assurance approaches has a considerable influence on alleviating consumers' privacy concerns, and ii) whether such influence will be moderated by the individual difference variable - locus of control (LOC). Three different privacy assurance approaches were manipulated in the study, and their effects on consumers' privacy concerns were examined. Results demonstrate the importance of LOC in moderating the effects of privacy assurance approaches on alleviating consumers' privacy concerns. We believe that the marriage of the privacy and social psychology literature may provide a rich understanding of consumers' privacy reactions to LBS usage, and therefore benefit the privacy research in Information Systems (IS) discipline.