• A Study on the Factors Affecting Downloading of Location Based Services Mobile Applications

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to find out if users may be attracted by the benefits of location based services (LBS) app’s functions, otherwise, users may have stopped by the perceived risks of the LBS app. Thus, we use privacy calculus theory to explain user behaviors in this context. Furthermore, we were to determine the impact of paid or free and app category on privacy calculus.

Design/methodology/approach – A total of 425 people responded to our online questionnaire. After dropping invalid or incomplete responses, only 418 surveys were considered valid. We adopted Smart PLS 2.0 to calculate the β coefficients and significance levels of all the proposed hypotheses.

Findings – First, whether paid or free makes a difference to the user’s privacy calculus depends on the app category. In the paid condition, users focus on the privacy disclosure benefits. This means that users will critically consider the app’s functionality. Users also attach importance to the privacy disclosure risks of hedonic apps. In the free condition, users attach more importance to the privacy disclosure benefits of utilitarian apps. Second, the app category also impacts the user’s privacy calculus. Users focus on the benefits of a utilitarian app and they pay more attention to the risks of a hedonic app.

Research limitations/implications – Our research focused on users of the Android platform, but the behaviors of IOS platform users might be different.

Practical implications/Social implications – Vendors of hedonic apps must either guarantee the security of their app or explain how the requested permissions are used by the app. Otherwise, the privacy disclosure risks decrease users’ intention to download the app.

Originality/value – Since there is almost no research discussing the effects of paid or free and app category on privacy risks, our research is the first to provide insight regarding these two constructs in this context.

Keywords – privacy calculus, location based services, app, technology acceptance model, word of mouth