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1. When does data collection and use become a matter of concern? A cross cultural comparison of American and Dutch people’s privacy attitudes.

   Liao, Y. (January 2020, Annals of the International Communication Association)

   Around the world, people increasingly generate data through their everyday activities. Much of this also happens unwittingly, thanks to sensors, cameras, and other surveillance tools on the roads, in cities, and in businesses. However, the ways citizens and governments think about privacy vary significantly around the world. In this paper, we explore differences between citizens’ attitudes toward privacy and data collection practices in the U.S. and the Netherlands, an EU member nation. Using a factorial vignette survey methodology, we identify specific contextual factors associated with people’s level of concern about how their data is being used. We consider the role that five factors play in this assessment: actors (those using data), data type and amount, reported purpose for data use, and inferences drawn from the data. These indicate nationally bound differences but likewise point to potentially more globally shared concerns. 

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2. Promoting data harmonization to evaluate vaccine hesitancy in LMICs: approach and applications

   https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-023-02088-z  

   Rego, Ryan T.; Zhukov, Yuri; Reneau, Kyrani A.; Pienta, Amy; Rice, Kristina L.; Brady, Patrick; Siwo, Geoffrey H.; Wachira, Peninah Wanjiku; Abubakar, Amina; Kollman, Ken; et al (December 2023, BMC Medical Research Methodology)

   Abstract BackgroundFactors influencing the health of populations are subjects of interdisciplinary study. However, datasets relevant to public health often lack interdisciplinary breath. It is difficult to combine data on health outcomes with datasets on potentially important contextual factors, like political violence or development, due to incompatible levels of geographic support; differing data formats and structures; differences in sampling procedures and wording; and the stability of temporal trends. We present a computational package to combine spatially misaligned datasets, and provide an illustrative analysis of multi-dimensional factors in health outcomes. MethodsWe rely on a new software toolkit, Sub-National Geospatial Data Archive (SUNGEO), to combine data across disciplinary domains and demonstrate a use case on vaccine hesitancy in Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). We use data from the World Bank’s High Frequency Phone Surveys (HFPS) from Kenya, Indonesia, and Malawi. We curate and combine these surveys with data on political violence, elections, economic development, and other contextual factors, using SUNGEO. We then develop a stochastic model to analyze the integrated data and evaluate 1) the stability of vaccination preferences in all three countries over time, and 2) the association between local contextual factors and vaccination preferences. ResultsIn all three countries, vaccine-acceptance is more persistent than vaccine-hesitancy from round to round: the long-run probability of staying vaccine-acceptant (hesitant) was 0.96 (0.65) in Indonesia, 0.89 (0.21) in Kenya, and 0.76 (0.40) in Malawi. However, vaccine acceptance was significantly less durable in areas exposed to political violence, with percentage point differences (ppd) in vaccine acceptance of -10 (Indonesia), -5 (Kenya), and -64 (Malawi). In Indonesia and Kenya, although not Malawi, vaccine acceptance was also significantly less durable in locations without competitive elections (-19 and -6 ppd, respectively) and in locations with more limited transportation infrastructure (-11 and -8 ppd). ConclusionWith SUNGEO, researchers can combine spatially misaligned and incompatible datasets. As an illustrative example, we find that vaccination hesitancy is correlated with political violence, electoral uncompetitiveness and limited access to public goods, consistent with past results that vaccination hesitancy is associated with government distrust. 

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3. An Examination of People’s Privacy Concerns, Perceptions of Social Benefits, and Acceptance of COVID-19 Mitigation Measures That Harness Location Information: A Comparative Study of the U.S. and South Korea

   https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi10010025  

   Kim, Junghwan; Kwan, Mei-Po (January 2021, ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information)

   null (Ed.)

   This paper examines people’s privacy concerns, perceptions of social benefits, and acceptance of various COVID-19 control measures that harness location information using data collected through an online survey in the U.S. and South Korea. The results indicate that people have higher privacy concerns for methods that use more sensitive and private information. The results also reveal that people’s perceptions of social benefits are low when their privacy concerns are high, indicating a trade-off relationship between privacy concerns and perceived social benefits. Moreover, the acceptance by South Koreans for most mitigation methods is significantly higher than that by people in the U.S. Lastly, the regression results indicate that South Koreans (compared to people in the U.S.) and people with a stronger collectivist orientation tend to have higher acceptance for the control measures because they have lower privacy concerns and perceive greater social benefits for the measures. These findings advance our understanding of the important role of geographic context and culture as well as people’s experiences of the mitigation measures applied to control a previous pandemic. 

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4. More Than Just Privacy: Using Contextual Integrity to Evaluate the Long-Term Risks from COVID-19 Surveillance Technologies

   https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120948250  

   Vitak, Jessica; Zimmer, Michael (July 2020, Social Media + Society)

   null (Ed.)

   The global coronavirus pandemic has raised important questions regarding how to balance public health concerns with privacy protections for individual citizens. In this essay, we evaluate contact tracing apps, which have been offered as a technological solution to minimize the spread of COVID-19. We argue that apps such as those built on Google and Apple’s “exposure notification system” should be evaluated in terms of the contextual integrity of information flows; in other words, the appropriateness of sharing health and location data will be contextually dependent on factors such as who will have access to data, as well as the transmission principles underlying data transfer. We also consider the role of prevailing social and political values in this assessment, including the large-scale social benefits that can be obtained through such information sharing. However, caution should be taken in violating contextual integrity, even in the case of a pandemic, because it risks a long-term loss of autonomy and growing function creep for surveillance and monitoring technologies. 

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5. From Contextualizing to Context Theorizing: Assessing Context Effects in Privacy Research

   https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.4249  

   Xu, Heng; Zhang, Nan (October 2022, Management Science)

   Over the past two decades, behavioral research in privacy has made considerable progress transitioning from acontextual studies to using contextualization as a powerful sensitizing device for illuminating the boundary conditions of privacy theories. Significant challenges and opportunities wait, however, on elevating and converging individually contextualized studies to a context-contingent theory that explicates the mechanisms through which contexts influence consumers’ privacy concerns and their behavioral reactions. This paper identifies the important barriers occasioned by this lack of context theorizing on the generalizability of privacy research findings and argues for accelerating the transition from the contextualization of individual research studies to an integrative understanding of context effects on privacy concerns. It also takes a first step toward this goal by providing a conceptual framework and the associated methodological instantiation for assessing how context-oriented nuances influence privacy concerns. Empirical evidence demonstrates the value of the framework as a diagnostic device guiding the selection of contextual contingencies in future research, so as to advance the pace of convergence toward context-contingent theories in information privacy. This paper was accepted by Anindya Ghose, information systems. 

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