The Influence of Context On Privacy Concern in Smart Tourism Destinations
The Influence of Context On Privacy Concern in Smart Tourism Destinations
ISSN 2454-5899
Ibrahim Adeshola
Eastern Mediterranean University, Famagusta, North Cyprus, Turkey
[email protected]
Ali Ozturen
Eastern Mediterranean University, Famagusta, North Cyprus, Turkey
[email protected]
Mustafa Ilkan
Eastern Mediterranean University, Famagusta, North Cyprus, Turkey
[email protected]
Abstract
A study of existing literature research shows that mobile application development and usage is
now an essential aspect of everyday life. The privacy concerns of the users towards the
application provided on the mobile devices that make use of their data is still a problem. This
study highlights the need for mitigating the privacy concern of the users towards mobile
applications used in smart tourism destinations and develops a framework based on the review
of previous research and literature. The framework proposed by this study supports the
relationship between personal beliefs and the environment, with the moderating effect of use
context. This research is empirically driven and discusses the relationships between the study
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item's privacy concern, use context, and behavioral intentions within the context of the mobile
application.
Keywords
Privacy Concern, Mobile Application, Behavioral Intentions, Smart Tourism Destination
1. Introduction
An environment where technology is embedded within the city to improve the people's
quality of life and services efficiency is known as Smart City. The development of Smart City
leads to the formation of Smart Tourism Destinations (STD), which was defined by Shafiee,
Ghatari, Hasanzadeh, & Jahanyan (2019) as an innovative tourism destination built upon a modern
technology infrastructure that encourages sustainable and easily accessible development of
tourist areas. The innocationn and application of tencology have becom an integral part of
sustainability (Fazal & Wahab 2015) and STD success depends on the interconnected devices
from several vendors and service providers, and the risks of information leaked are quite high as
the number of interconnected smart objects grows daily. They multiplied by the entanglements
involved in different vendors and interoperable systems (Masseno & Santos, 2018). In this case,
it has to be in the context that the tourists are well aware of the data privacy ethics of the tourist
service providers. Kokolakis (2015), found out that some e-shoppers are ready to give their
personal information to e-retailers in return for discount code or something else, irrespective of
any privacy concerns. This scenario referred to as a privacy paradox, which can define as an
inconsistency between people concerning privacy disclosure and their actual behavior (Gerber,
Gerber, & Volkamer, 2018).
Relating the privacy paradox to this study, we can assume that the tourists nowadays may
still be willing to be less concerned about their privacy in smart cities as long as the pros
outweigh the cons. Researches on smart tourism destinations are few in numbers, and nowadays,
governments are highly investing and promoting smart tourist, specifically in Asian nations
(Gretzel, Werthner, Koo, & Lamsfus, 2015). Therefore, it is vital to look into privacy concerns, how
it influences the behavioral intention of tourists in Smart tourism destinations STD, and we
argued that privacy concerns of the tourists could affect their behavioral intentions in smart
tourism destinations. The technological context of the smart tourism destination as a techno-
centric environment can influence the relationship.
1.1 Smart Devices Concerns in Smart Tourism Destination
The emergence of smart cities globally has had a substantial influence on the tourism
sector (Khan, Woo, Nam, & Chathoth, 2017). The principal factor that makes tourism
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destinations smart is the use of technology. The use of smartphones by the tourists has become a
necessity, and popularly now a standard gadget for tourists on holiday, Shafiee et al., (2019). The
authors further stated that STD aims to create a piece of new information supporting structures
that will adopt capabilities to enhance smart tourism organization's management processes. The
capabilities will also promote innovation, ease services, improve the tourism experience, and
enhance the competitiveness of organizations at the tourism destinations. A smart tourism
destination is a transition of smart cities where everything is interconnected. As devices are
becoming more intelligent in smart cities, online information privacy has become a social
concern for many people as they block their personal information on websites and reducing the
privilege of mobile applications (Ozdemir, Smith, & Benamati, 2017).
Consequently, the privacy concerns of tourists’ use of smart devices is a vital matter
influencing the tourist experience in terms of sustainability, and this negatively influences their
behaviors and subsequently affects their satisfaction in the smart environment (González-
Reverté, Díaz-Luque, Gomis-López & Morales-Pérez, 2018). The authors further emphasized
that privacy risk does have a predominantly negative influence on tourist experience.
Furthermore, Tourism is a growing industry that provides economic and social benefits
(Abdullahi et al., 2018) STD managers should take the privacy concern problems associated with
the mobile devices to use seriously and must be blended into their ethical perspective when
marketing a tourist destination. Nevertheless, the STD designed to enrich the tourist experiences
and to improve the competitiveness of each destination. Additionally, the tourists at STD can get
a brief or full historical place details through smart scanning or augmented reality devices.
Furthermore, location-based services are other benefits of STD, which could give tourists
alert to nearby restaurants or stores making promotional sales. Besides, tourists waiting time in
highly populated restaurants will be minimized, as they can quickly request for drinks and snacks
while waiting for their meal. Additionally, tourist service providers can be aware of customers'
special dietary conditions concerning their medical problems, religious restrictions, and any form
of restrictions they might have. All the benefits, as mentioned earlier of STD, are only possible if
the tourist is to turn-on their smart devices GPS and were less concerned about their privacy.
Though privacy concerns are one of the predominant factors affecting tourists to tap into the free
resources available in smart tourism destinations, as well as to get information about touristic
areas quickly, this paper looks into the use of context to mitigate the privacy concerns of tourists
in a smart tourism destination.
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2. Literature Review
The smart tourism destination was coined from smart city, which in that it includes the
touristic infrastructure and the smart technology infrastructure, and all this together creates a
smart tourism ecosystem. Tourists in this destination make use of their smart devices to connect
into the available resources of the smart tourism ecosystem and at the same time actively
contribute data via their movements, queries, pictures, and videos uploads are also included as
primary factors in the smart tourism ecosystem, among other principal factors such as residents,
government and media (Gretzel, Reino, Kopera, & Koo, 2015). As everything in connection with
technologies do have challenges, so as smart tourism destination who relied on technological
infrastructure have various challenges mentioned in the literature like management of the smart
destination which includes big data management, web management, infrastructure management,
database management, online marketing management, privacy concerns (Van 2016; Choe &
Fesenmaier, 2017; Femenia-Serra, 2018). Van (2016) research revealed that the factors
influencing people's concerns about privacy in smart tourism destinations are related to the data
types involved, data collection and usage purpose, and the individual or organization collecting,
using, and managing the data. Privacy concerns were defined as a user's concern in respect of
information disclosure (Zhou and Li, 2014). Nowadays, some national bodies and international
bodies have started to emphasize on the importance of privacy policy, as they regarded it as one
of the 21st-century challenges (Van, 2016). Although this is not an unexpected or astonishing
movement, as many users have started realizing the significance of securing their information
both online and offline in a territory, they are not familiar. In May 2018, the European Union
(EU) implemented the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which addresses data
protection and privacy for all EU citizens, foreigners in Eurozone, and the European Economic
Area. The regulation also addresses the transfer of personal data outside the EU and EEA areas.
Likewise, in the USA, in the e-commerce application setting and websites, several privacy-
related rules are stated there, like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which has been
committing their time and attention to the protection of data privacy (Fortes and Rita, 2016).
Nevertheless, it was revealed that data privacy is one of the significant concerns in
mobile applications as many grant privileges without reading it. Since organizations could
collect personal information, it could be stored for future usage by them (Okazaki et al., 2012).
Kokolakis (2017), also revealed that mobile applications (app) users who wish not to share their
personal information eventually uninstall the application, when they noticed that the app is
collecting their personal information. Liu & Liu (2016) also analyzed the relationship between
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smart cities and smart tourism, and their research results revealed that lack of sound security
mechanism, lack of universal standard, inadequate relevant law, and lack of cooperation are
among the challenges smart tourism destination are facing. Additionally, the health sector in
smart cities have the most significant type of critical infrastructure and if it's prone to security
threats, it may lead to patients privacy concerns and also pose threats to their life as the critical
information can be exposed by the attackers (Ijaz et al., 2016). Therefore, tourists are not only
concerned about their smartphone, which is a principal component of the Internet of Things
(IoT) infrastructure in smart cities but also concerns about the environment in which they are
using it, what they do with it and how they behave. As emphasized by Jung & Park (2018),
privacy concerns affect the coping behavior of customers, and when they found out an
organization gives their information to the third party without their consent, and they might stop
using the company services or reporting the organizations for improper practices. Van (2016)
proposed a framework to identify what kind of privacy concerns the use of smart technologies
and of data produce may raise among tourists in smart cities, as people perceive particular data
as personal or impersonal, and that their concerns differ according to the purpose for which data
is collected and used. The author categorized the four areas of privacy concerns emerge that
range from hardly any (impersonal data & service purpose) to incredibly high (personal data &
surveillance purpose). Hence, by identifying tourist's privacy concerns with specific technologies
and data practices will help smart tourism destinations set a policy on new developments that
will accommodate the concerns of the tourist, beyond the bare legal necessities (Van, 2016).
Behavioral intention is defined as the willingness to visit a destination, purchase a product, and
use of services as intended by the tourist (Chen, Shang, & Li, 2014). Prior studies have found out
that higher positive products review, overall destination image or comments by the people via
social platforms do affect the behavioral intention of the tourists (Park & Lee, 2008; Chen,
Shang, & Li, 2014; Jung & Park, 2018; Sharma & Naya, 2018). Therefore, in the era of smart
tourism destinations, as tourists perceived that the use of smart devices in smart cities could lead
to privacy violation, this might affects that behavioral intention. Based on this assertions, we
proposed that:
Proposition 1: Privacy concerns of tourists negatively affect their behavioral intention towards
mobile application in a smart tourism destination.
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Context is a fundamental concept in information system research (Kim, Chang, Chong, & Park,
2019), but with its importance, there is no consensus in the literature about its definition (Lui &
Li, 2011). Context has been conceptualized as information that composes of behavior relating to
the interrelationship of people, their environment, and the technology they use (Dey, 2001).
Also, the study on context has argued that the definition of context composes of the different
types of contexts that can exist with humans and any technology application. That is the context
of the situation that influences a user to use a technology (Barnard, Yi, Jacko, & Sears, 2007). Use
context “refers to various environments in which ubiquitous computing is used, which include
physical, social, temporal, task definition, and antecedent states” (Belk, 1975) Furthermore, Van
de Wijngaert & Bouwman (2009) defined use context as” the very concrete environment in
which a technology is going to be used." The study on use context have been specifically
targeted towards mobile technology, as mobile technology have become a device that users carry
with them everywhere they go (Zhou, 2012), which makes the context of use with mobile
application very dynamic (Chang, 2015), as the situation that would require a user to use a
location-based application when they are sitting at home would be different from what would
make them use a location application when they are in a train station or are lost as suggested by
Perry et al. (2001) or the situation that would make a police officer adoption mobile service
usage during an emergency compared to when there is no emergency (Bouwan et al., 2008). Use
context has been studied to be positively related to the behavioral intention of mobile application
gaming adoption (Liu & Li, 2011). Also, Yang, Lu, Gupta, & Cao, (2012) argued that use context
influences a user to use mobile internet, and found use context to be positively related to
behavioral intentions towards mobile internet., also use context have been studied to be
positively related to adoption intentions of mobile application (Lui & Yi, 2017), use context have
also been studied to positively influence use intention of mobile ticketing (Mallat, Rossi,
Tuunainen, & Öörni, 2009), furthermore use context have been studied to moderate the
relationship between social value and perceived value (Chang, 2015). While the study on the
ease of use, benefit, and usefulness considered only the utilitarian value of technology, use
context considers advantages under different circumstances (Kim et al., 2015; 2019). Both
personal and environmental factors play a role in use context perceived benefit and usefulness.
For example, a tourist during a trip while traveling might be bored and be motivated to use
different mobile application, and also location-based services that they might have not to use if
they were not in that physical location or environment (Yang et al., 2012). Also, the fact that
technology is used all through in a smart tourism destination is another context the tourist would
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consider when using a mobile application, especially when they know that the only option they
have to get a service available to them is via a mobile technology, or using their location-based
information, they have less privacy concern, with the understanding of why their information is
being collected. González-Reverté et al., (2018) found out that privacy risk had a significant
negative impact on the tourist experience, and using location-based services one of the most
popular applications available on mobile technology is a significant concern for users ( Hong et
al., 2015), and also a concern for service providers in destinations as they want the users to use
the application, but the privacy concern that the users have towards providing their information
to service provider is a challenge, in the privacy paradox domain, where users considers the
benefit of using the mobile application, and this can reduce their privacy concern, but there is no
consensus both in the literature, and in the industry about the benefit of personalization in
mitigating privacy concern which is why it is still a paradox (Lee & Rha, 2016), this study
proposes not just the personalization benefit, but also the environmental factor can influence and
mitigate the privacy concern of a user towards a mobile application behavioral intention. That is
intention to use and also recommend to others, thereby while privacy concern can be negatively
related to user’s mobile application services behavioral intention, the use context would
influence the relationship such that the adverse relation would be reduced based on the context of
use of mobile application in a smart tourism destination; therefore, we propose that.
Proposition 2: Use context moderated the negative relationship between privacy concern and
behavioral intention of (MALBS)
Use
Context
P2
P1
Behavioral
Privacy Intention
Concern
literature on mobile application privacy concern, not just towards behavioral intentions, but also
the impact of privacy concern towards adoption intention, usage intention, and the role use
context can play in the inter role between technology, people and their environment.
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