Willingness to grant access to personal information among augmented reality mobile app users

The main aim of this research is to gain understanding of the motives and factors that influence users’ willingness to share personal information, particularly in the realm of augmented reality (AR) apps. Within this context, we also examined the hot–cold empathy gap, i.e., the difference between how people estimate their reactions if faced with a particular situation (cold) to how they act when they are in such a situation (hot). Four experiments were executed to examine the research questions. The Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) crowdsourcing platform was used to recruit participants from all around the world. An experimental method was used to address a number of research questions. In order to avoid a carry-over effect, a different group of participants was recruited for each question researched. The research focused on participants over the age of 18, from different countries with various backgrounds. The various experiments mimic real life scenarios. Findings show that AR app users are willing to grant access to certain types of information but are prone to refuse access to highly invasive personal information. The order of requests presented to users to grant access to their personal information is significant. In addition, we found a correlation between the time gaps between access requests and the willingness of users to grant access. Finally, we found that users underestimate their own willingness to share their private information when they are asked a hypothetical question about it. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature.