Privacy Concerns of Mobile App Users: An Empirical Study

To provide high quality, on demand localized and personalized services, mobile apps collect data about user's location, daily behavior, personal preferences, age, gender, and other personally identifying information. Often, they also collect data unnecessary for the functionality of app and use it for unauthorized purposes. Aggressive data access and transmission practices employed by vendors and app developers have opened a new door to mobile privacy invasion and aggravated privacy concerns among users. This study is designed to empirically understand how privacy concerns drive mobile app usage by exploring consumers’ intention to use mobile apps. Our findings indicate that perceived severity, perceived surveillance, and secondary use of personal information have strong effect on privacy concerns. Additionally, the moderating effects of perceived benefits and self-efficacy are strong, mitigating the effect of privacy concerns on intention to use mobile apps. Implications to researchers and practitioners are discussed.