An Experimental Study on U-commerce Adoption Impact of Personalization and Privacy Concerns.pdf

Sheng et al. Personalization in U-commerce Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Workshop on HCI Research in MIS, Milwaukee, WI, December 9, 2006 80 An Experimental Study on U-commerce Adoption: Impact of Personalization and Privacy Concerns Hong Sheng University of Missouri-Rolla hsheng@ Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah University of Nebraska -Lincoln fnah@ Keng Siau University of Nebraska-Lincoln ksiau@ ABSTRACT U-commerce represents “anytime, anywhere” commerce. U-commerce can provide a high level of personalization, which can bring significant benefits to customers. However, customers’ privacy is a major concern and obstacle to the adoption of u-commerce. As customers’ intention to adopt u-commerce is based on the aggregate effect of perceived benefits and risk exposure (e.g., privacy concerns), this research examines how personalization and context can impact on customers’ perceived benefits and privacy concerns, and how this aggregated effect in turn affects u-commerce adoption intention. Keywords U-commerce, personalization-privacy paradox, situation dependency, adoption intention INTRODUCTION The advancement of new technologies such as radio frequency identification (RFID) and sensor networks has initiated a trend towards ubiquitous computing, which is also called “anytime, anywhere” computing (Lyytinen et al., 2004). In a ubiquitous computing environment, computing devices, applications, networks, and data will be fully integrated and merged (Junglas and Watson, 2006). Almost any physical item can be embedded with computing power to establish a unique and verifiable identity, store a wealth of information, collect observations from the physical world, and sense changes in the environment. Ubiquitous technologies will increasingly form the background of the way we expect things to work (Rusell et al., 2005) and, in that sense, “disappear into the fabric of the world” (Russell et al., 2005) and become part of our daily life. Ubiquitous