Invasion of privacy in smart services: the role of interaction mode and privacy commitment

Abstract

Purpose

The widespread application of smart technologies in services not only brings efficiency and convenience to consumers but also inevitably comes with negative effects. Therefore, this article aims to illustrate the impact of privacy invasion on consumers' intention to use smart services. Using distrust as a mediating variable, compare two different modes of interaction between voice and text, and study the positive impact of privacy commitment. This study aims to provide recommendations for smart service providers to make the consumer experience better.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper adopts an experimental approach, with data collection and hypothesis analysis by designing four different experiments.

Findings

The results show that the negative impact of privacy invasion on consumers' intention to use smart services is moderated by privacy commitments and interaction modes. This article verifies the mediating effect of distrust on consumers' intention to use when privacy invasion occurs and verifies the moderating effect of the interaction modes by comparing voice interaction with text interaction and demonstrates that text interaction mode will attenuate the mediating role of distrust in the path in privacy invasion. Besides, it also indicates that privacy commitments can moderate the relationship between privacy invasion’s effect on distrust and intention to use.

Originality/value

Focusing on privacy invasion, this study explores consumers' intention to use smart services, compares the two interaction modes of voice and text to explore their moderating effects, deeply explores consumer psychology and studies the mediating role of distrust and the moderating role of privacy commitment.

Citation

Du, W. and Wang, Y. (2024), "Invasion of privacy in smart services: the role of interaction mode and privacy commitment", Journal of Service Theory and Practice, Vol. 34 No. 6, pp. 963-984. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSTP-09-2023-0258