Effectiveness of Privacy Assurance Approaches in Location-Based Services: A Study of India and the United States

The increasing commercial potential and rapid growth of location based services (LBS) have been accompanied by concerns over the collection and use of personal information by LBS providers. In this paper we study the influence of three privacy assurance approaches that might be used to ensure privacy in location-based services. With the usage context included as a covariate, we examine the influence of privacy assurance approaches in individualist and collectivist cultures. The results reveal how culture may moderate the effects of privacy assurance approaches on influencing users' privacy risk and information control perceptions. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.