Prohibitive factors to the acceptance of Internet of Things (IoT) technology in society: A smart-home context using a resistive modelling approach

Abstract

With the advent of various Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, smart-homes have become an important application area. However, the low end-user penetration of the smart-home market as of 2021 points out towards the fact that the users are resistant to use home IoT and smart-home solutions. Privacy concerns is an important factor that hinders the smart-home adoption as per existing literatures. Unfortunately, current smart-home literatures have not focused enough on the theoretical aspect of the privacy concern construct per se, what are its various antecedents, and what constitutes the users’ privacy concerns. Consequently, in this work a resistive modelling approach is used focusing on the privacy aspect that hinders the diffusion of IoT-based smart-homes in the society. Innovation Resistance Theory (IRT) and Multidimensional Development Theory (MDT) are used as the theoretical background. Multiple antecedents of privacy concern are considered ranging from individual (user skill), technological to environmental factors (legal & policy aspect). Moreover, privacy concern is treated from three aspects of informational privacy, physical privacy, and psychological privacy. The proposed model is validated and tested using data collected from 463 users residing in Thailand. The differences in privacy perception and its effect on user resistance depending on gender and residence type is also discussed. Results show that the user characteristics of user skill has the highest impact on privacy concern, followed by legal & policy aspect, and technological aspect respectively. Moreover, physical, and psychological privacy are more important than informational privacy concerns. Appropriate theoretical and practical suggestions are provided based on the results.