Simply tell me how---On Trustworthiness and Technology Acceptance of Attribute-Based Credentials

Abstract

Attribute-based Credential Schemes (ACS) have been long proposed as privacy-preserving means of authentication, yet have not found wide-spread adoption to date. We ask what factors explain whether users will adopt ACS or not. To that end, we aim to comprehend how factors interrelate to predict ACS technology acceptance and to investigate how intrinsic and presentation aspects of the ACS cause the intent to use them. We conducted two between-subject, random-controlled trials with a combined UK-representative sample of N = 812 participants. After having stated their privacy concerns and faith-in-technology, each participant then inspected one variant of an ACS website, which encoded a combination of three intrinsic aspects and three presentation aspects of an ACS. Participants then reported on the perceived trustworthiness, perceived usefulness, and their behavioral intention to adopt the technology. We proposed an extended Technology Acceptance Model incorporating privacy concern and perceived trustworthiness and show in covariance-based structural equation modeling that the model explains user decision making very well. We could show that communicating facilitating conditions and demonstrating results drives the overall technology acceptance. Communicating with simple language impacted the behavioral intent to use the ACS positively. Our work is the first to show cause-effect relations for ACS adoption with substantial sample size. This study not only informs what factors impact the technology acceptance of ACS, but likely also translates to other privacy-enhancing technologies and yields methodological considerations for research into the privacy paradox at large.