The effects of privacy concerns and personal innovativeness on potential and experienced customers’ adoption of location-based services

Location-Based Services (LBS) use positioning technology to provide individual users the capability of being constantly reachable and accessing network services while ‘on the move’. However, privacy concerns associated with the use of LBS may ultimately prevent consumers from gaining the convenience of ‘anytime anywhere’ personalized services. We examine the adoption of this emerging technology through a privacy lens. Drawing on the privacy literature and theories of technology adoption, we use a survey approach to develop and test a conceptual model to explore the effects of privacy concerns and personal innovativeness on customers’ adoption of LBS. In addition, as a number of IS researchers have shown that customers differ in their decision making for continued adoption as compared to initial decision making, we test the research model separately for potential and experienced customers. The results indicate that privacy concerns significantly influence continued adoption as compared to initial adoption. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.