Communication privacy management for smart speaker use: Integrating the role of privacy self-efficacy and the multidimensional view

Abstract

Smart speakers can transform interactions with users into retrievable data, posing new challenges to privacy management. Privacy management in smart speakers can be more complex than just making decisions about disclosure based on the risk–benefit analysis. Hence, this study attempts to integrate privacy self-efficacy and the multidimensional view of privacy management behaviors into the privacy calculus model and proposes an extended privacy calculus model for smart speaker usage. The study explicates three types of privacy management strategies in smart speaker usage: privacy disclosure, boundary linkage, and boundary control. A survey of smart speaker users (N = 474) finds that perceived benefits are positively associated with privacy disclosure and boundary linkage, whereas perceived privacy risks are negatively related to these two strategies. Also, perceived privacy risks are positively related to boundary control. Finally, privacy self-efficacy promotes all three strategies while mitigating the impact of perceived privacy risks and boosting the impact of perceived benefits on privacy management.