The impact of privacy concern on user adoption of location‐based services

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of privacy concern on user adoption of location‐based services (LBS).

Based on the data collected from a survey, structural equation modeling was employed to examine the research model.

The results indicate that among four dimensions of privacy concern, collection and secondary use are the main factors affecting perceived risk, whereas errors are the main factor affecting trust. Trust affects perceived risk, and both factors determine usage intention.

Mobile service providers need to alleviate users' privacy concern and perceived risk in order to encourage their adoption and usage of LBS.

Extant research has mainly examined LBS user behavior from the perspectives of technology acceptance model, task technology fit and unified theory of acceptance and usage of technology. The results provided in this paper indicate that privacy concern also has a significant effect on user adoption of LBS. This advances our understanding of LBS user behavior.