Privacy Perception and Behavior in Safety-Critical Environments

Abstract

When considering privacy, context, and environmental circumstances can have a strong influence on individual decisions and user behavior. Especially in crises or threatening situations, privacy may conflict with other values, such as personal safety and health. In other cases, personal or public safety can also be dependent on privacy: the context of flight shows how, for those affected, the value of data protection can increase as a result of an increased threat situation. Thus, when individual sovereignty—the autonomous development of one’s own will—or safety is highly dependent on information flows, people tend to be more protective of their privacy in order to maintain their information sovereignty. But also, the context of agriculture, as part of the critical infrastructure, shows how privacy concerns can affect the adoption of digital tools. With these two examples, flight and migration as well as agriculture, this chapter presents some exemplary results that illustrate the importance of the influence of situational factors on perceived information sovereignty and the evaluation of privacy.