Concerns with protecting privacy, especially of online data, has been a goal of privacy scholarship for years. Because most data are transferred online, many instruments focus on online environments. However, when privacy is invaded and data mishandled, the consequences, including the emotional ramifications, extend beyond the online space and into the offline world. Thus, we developed the CPIP, a measure of privacy concern. We were able to (1) determine the top four domains for informational privacy and (2) correlate that concern with emotional outcomes showing people with high concerns felt less calm, less at ease, and angrier, after reading prompts about the right to privacy protection. The CPIP predicts who experiences an emotional reaction to a loss of privacy and steps for Internet providers collecting data online to create a better balance for users and their privacy. This alignment (or misalignment) of attitudes and behaviors challenge the privacy paradox.
Mobile identification (mID) allows users to prove identity across many situations like when traveling through an airport; however, the personally identifiable information in the mID, if mishandled, poses a great threat to privacy. One solution is NeuroTechnology privacy enhancing technologies (PETs), which can be paired with the mID to authenticate users using one's unique neuro-proprioceptive signals that are safer than traditional security methods like facial recognition. Across two studies, we explore how TAM constructs impact mID download intentions (DI) and how pairing the PET with the mID impacts DI. In Study 1 (N = 465), mID-specific privacy concerns, anxiety (mID-ANX), general privacy concerns, and perceived privacy risk (mID-PPR) were strong negative predictors of DI. In Study 2 (N = 420), pairing the NeuroTechnology PET with the mID led to decreased mID-PPR and mID-ANX, and increased DI. An experimental mediation model demonstrated that pairing the NeuroTechnology PET with the mID was linked to higher DI because of decreased mID-PPR and mID-ANX leading to greater mID positive attitudes. Because privacy concerns and anxiety are barriers to technology acceptance in the TAM literature, NeuroTechnology PETs provide a solution to reduce privacy concerns and anxiety, and improve technology adoption.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced workers to pivot to working from home (WFH), shifting from a dominantly offline to a dominantly online workplace, often conducting this shift to online work using video conference meetings. Although businesses tried to seamlessly continue business using video conferencing, research on how productivity has changed during the pandemic has been mixed. To better understand how productivity has been impacted during the pandemic, despite decades of research prior to the pandemic demonstrating the effectiveness of WFH, we conducted three quantitative and qualitative studies with workers from April 2020 to April 2021. Workers who reported video conferencing feeling like a forced interaction also reported dramatic levels of low subjective productivity through increased feelings of video conferencing anxiety (Studies 1–3). Qualitative reports of why workers felt forced to video conference identified feeling pressured by employers to use video and meetings being used as surveillance (Study 1b). However, some workers reported positive experiences while video conferencing, which was related to greater subjective productivity (Study 2). For workers who had video conference and face-to-face meetings, video conference meetings feeling like a forced interaction was still associated with lower subjective productivity through increased feelings of anxiety (even when controlling for face-to-face meetings feeling like a forced interaction; Study 3). Because WFH may last beyond COVID-19, organizations and managers should allow workers to use audio instead of video during meetings and refrain from using video conferencing meetings to surveil their employees to ensure workers are reporting that they are remaining productive.
Research during the pandemic has demonstrated that the rapid shift to emergency distance learning has impacted students' emotions. What explains this link remains a sparsely explored question. Because many students report negative experiences while video conferencing during emergency distance learning, one avenue that has yet to be explored is whether students' attitudes towards video conferencing may explain the link between video conferencing and students' emotions. As such, to explore this question, a total of 558 college students and 219 parents or guardians of K-12 students completed a survey about their video conferencing attitudes while emergency distance learning and their positive and negative emotions while video conferencing during emergency distance learning. Across both samples, even after controlling for student learning and teacher evaluations, when students held the attitude that video conferencing during emergency distance learning felt like a forced interaction, students reported greater negative emotions. Because instructors can use the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic to improve distance learning in the future, video conferencing attitudes that are most strongly related to negative emotions should continue to be explored.
