Internet of Things Technology: Balancing privacy concerns with convenience

Abstract

The diversification of the use of Internet of Things (IoT) technology attracts a variety of consumers. Based on this social change, we examine the effect of IoT usage on users’ media privacy concerns, focusing on the use of wearable devices while considering cloud service usage. The data were derived from the Korea Media Panel Survey collected from 2018 to 2020 in South Korea. We extracted a final sample of 690 participants using the propensity score matching (PSM) method and applied logistic regression to analyze the data. We reveal the different perceptions of media privacy concerns between IoT service users and non-users. We found that greater use of wearable devices results in greater concern about media privacy. On the contrary, the concern is lower when cloud services are used. We propose that the use of physical IoT technology leads to an increase in anxiety about the risk of personal data leakage, whereas the use of non-physical IoT does not have a significant effect. Currently, the usage of IoT devices and services is on the rise, so this anxiety can also be expected to increase. We discuss the risks of privacy and data breaches and the need for countermeasures to balance the use of IoT technology.