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1. Introduction
Internet of things (IoT) devices are networks of smart things that enable people and objects to be connected through the internet infrastructure. The increasing availability and diversity of the IoT enable a society in which all members have access to internet services, which are populated by self-configuring, self-managing smart technology anytime and anywhere (Atzori et al., 2010). These devices enable data collection from the surrounding human environment to provide useful services for individuals, such as energy savings, security, home automation, transportation, wellness and many more in the future. Similar to any other technology, the application of the IoT has disadvantages. The collection of data about individuals exposes them to possible violations of privacy, which can make the adoption of IoT devices a challenging task (Dutton, 2014; Gubbi et al., 2013). Perpetual collection of people’s data enables one to track the actions and behavior of the users and derive sensitive information about individuals, which is not only utilized by the technology itself but also by third parties such as businesses, hackers and governments.
The absence of privacy protection has been shown to be an influencing factor regarding the acceptance and adoption of the IoT (Chow et al., 2015; Hsu and Lin, 2016). Increasingly, many people are becoming vigilant about their interaction with IoT devices, particularly because of recent media coverage about the CIA’s program (i.e. Vault7) that turns some IoT-enabled devices into surveillance tools (Coldewey, 2017). This situation is compounded by the fact that the IoT users are not notified when potentially sensitive information is collected, and there is no user interface to specify the privacy preferences for the services (Lee and Kobsa, 2016).
Despite the importance of the developments in the field of the IoT, researchers know little about individuals’ thoughts and feelings about privacy in regards to the IoT. The research on privacy concerns from individuals’ perspectives of the IoT is limited to privacy concerns from the viewpoint of IoT experts (Virkki and Chen, 2013), coarsely defined contexts (Lee and Kobsa, 2016) or affecting factors that researchers borrow from other research areas such as e-commerce (Kowatsch and Maass, 2012). Compared to e-commerce, where the users have some control over information disclosure, IoT devices unobtrusively collect data. Additionally, previous studies...