Capturing drivers’ privacy preferences for intelligent transportation systems: An intercultural perspective

Abstract

While recent research on intelligent transportation systems including vehicular communication systems has focused on technical aspects, little research work has been conducted on drivers’ privacy perceptions and preferences. Understanding the driver’s privacy perceptions and preferences will allow researchers to design usable privacy and identity management systems offering user privacy choices and controls for intelligent transportation systems. We conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with 17 Swedish drivers to analyse their privacy perceptions and preferences for intelligent transportation systems, particularly for user control and for privacy trade-offs with cost, safety and usability. We also compare our results from the interviews with Swedish drivers with results from interviews that we conducted previously with South African drivers. Our cross-cultural comparison shows that perceived privacy implications, the drivers’ willingness to share location information under certain conditions with other parties, as well as their appreciation of Privacy Enhancing Technologies differ significantly across drivers with different cultural backgrounds. We further discuss the cultural impact on privacy preferences, including those for privacy trade-offs, and the implications of our results for usable privacy-enhancing Identity Management for future vehicular communication systems. In particular, we provide recommendations for suitable pre-defined privacy options to be offered to users with different cultural backgrounds enabling them to easily make privacy-related control choices.