Too Close to Home: The Drivers of Perceived Risk of Home Automation

While automation in the workforce is widely studied, home automation, and the accompanied reservations about potential risks and privacy invasion, is deficiently examined and worthy of research attention. Seeking to understand the factors that aggravate the perceived risk of using smart home devices, this study identifies and examines the effects of three types of concerns on perceived use risk. These address the behaviors of the device and its manufacturer, as well the privacy concerns emerging from its use. The results of a survey of current users confirm that product and privacy concerns explain a large portion of the variance in perceived risk, and further suggest that privacy concerns are driven by the uncertainty about what data is collected by the device, and how that data is used and protected. The study makes initial but significant contributions to our understanding of the inhibitors affecting the adoption of these ubiquitous devices