Trust-Promoting Seals in Green Information Systems: The Case of Smart Meters and Privacy

Green Information Systems (IS) often require to obtain data in order to assess environmental outcomes and improve sustainable behaviours. As a result, privacy concerns can act as a barrier to the utilization of Green IS. We explore the case of smart meters, which track users’ personal energy usage data and provide real-time information, thus allowing users to reduce energy consumption. In this research-in-progress paper, we report on the development of a research model and experimental design to test the impact of trust seals, which can help to build trust and alleviate privacy concerns. For this reason, we refer to green energy and privacy seals that assess and certify the energy efficiency and privacy practices of companies. We further explore opt-out mechanisms, which give consumers the possibility to opt out of smart meter data collection that can also lead to a reduction of consumers’ privacy concerns with smart meters

Boosting Green Behaviors through Information Systems that Enable Environmental Sensemaking

We explore how information systems can enable sensemaking of environmental information by users, and how this support for sensemaking affects beliefs, actions, and outcomes of work practices. In this research-in-progress paper we report on the development of our new theory and we outline the research design of a field experiment in which we will subject our theory to a first empirical evaluation. Once completed, our study will provide implications regarding the design of information systems for environmental sensemaking, and substantiate the role that sensemaking plays in belief formation, action formation, and outcome assessment of work practices

Mobile information systems' security, privacy, and environmental sustainability aspects

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Mobile Applications and Access to Personal Information: A Discussion of Users\u27 Privacy Concerns

Mobile applications (apps) have become highly popular and are creating new economic opportunities for app providers, developers, software companies, and advertisers. Due to the access to personal information, mobile apps may pose a threat to users’ privacy, which can incite users not to install or to uninstall mobile apps. In the last twenty years, concerns for information privacy (CFIP) have been investigated by several studies, which adapted CFIP to an online and to a mobile context. Our extended approach for mobile users’ information privacy concerns (MUIPC) analyzes four dimensions of access to personal information, i.e., personal identity, location, device content, and system and network settings. By conducting an online survey with 474 participants, we test the influence of these dimensions on MUIPC with a structural equation model (SEM). Three dimensions are found to be significantly influential. The results are discussed and implications for research and practice are given

Resource Integration in a Vehicle Ecosystem

Service-dominant logic has moved users from consumers to valued co-creators in transactional ecosystems. In service-dominant logic, privacy and trust are private resources. This logic is a metaperspective that needs to be integrated with mid-range theories to investigate how these resources are integrated, and what influence the integration. Thus, this study uses the enhanced antecedents–privacy concerns–outcomes model. This model includes different levels of cognitive effort that influence private resource integration. Then, we conducted interviews with Tesla owners in Australia. Tesla owners gave high-level cognitive responses and attitudes, including environmental concerns, altruism, attitudes towards electric vehicles, and privacy concerns. They also gave low-level cognitive responses or biases, such as implicit trust and positivity. Specifically, our findings indicate that users distrust vehicle manufacturers; environmental concerns lead to perceived benefits; altruism, implicit trust, and positivity mitigate privacy concerns; and privacy concerns increase the perceived privacy risks. These behavioral responses influence resource integration, feeding into our proposed model

How Can Mobile Applications Reduce Energy Consumption? An Experimental Investigation of Electric Vehicles

The role of information systems for environmental sustainability has received considerable attention over the last several years. In view of global warming and climate change, a transition from combustion to electric vehicles (EVs) can help reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Since sustainable behavior often lacks relevant information about its environmental effects, the role of information systems in influencing energy consumption is being explored in this paper. The main focus is to investigate the impact of driver assistance systems in form of mobile applications on the energy consumption of EVs. To test such an impact, a field experiment is conducted by defining a control group and an experimental group. Test drives are performed with an all-electric, lithium-ion battery powered, small passenger city car. As the treatment of the study, a mobile application is chosen that monitors excessive acceleration and hard braking. The results reveal significant differences among the groups, which indicate that using smartphone-based driver assistance systems significantly reduces the energy consumption of EVs. This can entail several benefits, including an increase of range of EVs, electricity cost savings, decrease of vehicle wear, and reduction of GHG emissions. The findings are discussed and implications for research and practice are given

Drivers behind the public perception of artificial intelligence: insights from major Australian cities

Artificial intelligence (AI) is not only disrupting industries and businesses, particularly the ones have fallen behind the adoption, but also significantly impacting public life as well. This calls for government authorities pay attention to public opinions and sentiments towards AI. Nonetheless, there is limited knowledge on what the drivers behind the public perception of AI are. Bridging this gap is the rationale of this paper. As the methodological approach, the study conducts an online public perception survey with the residents of Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, and explores the collected survey data through statistical analysis. The analysis reveals that: (a) the public is concerned of AI invading their privacy, but not much concerned of AI becoming more intelligent than humans; (b) the public trusts AI in their lifestyle, but the trust is lower for companies and government deploying AI; (c) the public appreciates the benefits of AI in urban services and disaster management; (d) depending on the local context, public perceptions vary; and (e) the drivers behind the public perception include gender, age, AI knowledge, and AI experience. The findings inform authorities in developing policies to minimise public concerns and maximise AI awareness. </p

Investigating the influence of security, privacy, and legal concerns on employees' intention to use BYOD mobile devices

The concept of Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) describes the trend of employees using their private mobile devices to manage corporate data from anywhere at any time. BYOD can increase employees' productivity and be cost-cutting for organizations. To implement BYOD, organizations are dependent on employees’ acceptance of BYOD, because employees' participation usually is voluntary. As employees' acceptance is affected by uncertainty, we investigate the influence of security, privacy, and legal concerns on the intention to use BYOD mobile devices. A research model is developed based on the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and the technology acceptance model (TAM), which is tested by means of structural equation modeling (SEM) with data collected from 151 employees. Our results indicate a significant impact of the concerns on employees’ acceptance. Moreover, our study reveals employees' indecision towards their intention to use their private mobile devices for working purposes. Several implications for future research and practitioners are given

Future of Flexible Work in the Digital Age: Bring Your Own Device Challenges of Privacy Protection

The future of work is getting increasingly flexible due to the rising expectations of employees away from traditional 9-to-5 office work towards flexible work hours, which drives employees to use their mobile devices for work. This ever-growing phenomenon of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) creates security risks for companies, which leads to an implementation of mobile device management (MDM) solutions to secure and monitor employees’ mobile devices. We present insights from two multinational case companies, where works councils have expressed their concerns for privacy intrusion into employees’ lives through BYOD. To examine whether employees share works councils’ concerns, we conducted a survey with 542 employees from three countries: United States, Germany, and South Korea. Results of a structural equation modeling show that American employees place greater emphasis on BYOD risks associated with privacy concerns compared to employees from Germany and South Korea

Toward a Decision Support System for Mitigating Urban Heat

With the continuous rise of global urbanization, city planners and policymakers are increasingly concerned with urban heat islands (UHI), which are metropolitan areas that are significantly warmer than their surrounding rural areas. We address the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 11 “Sustainable Cities and Communities,” and we design and develop a decision support system (DSS), which will help city planners and policymakers to overcome economic barriers to reach environmental sustainability goals