Modelling Trust to Preserve End-User Privacy in Location Based Services

Location Based Services (LBS) user is concerned about unauthorized access to the personal information that has been revealed during service consumption. Observations tell us that user concern about privacy is due to uncertainty (a trust-gap) as a result of tradeoff between benefits derived from LBS vs. partial compromise over privacy. Privacy preserving in LBS is a socio-technical challenge that is mostly addressed from technology viewpoint without ample consideration of end-user perspective (for whom it is actually intended). This paper formalizes a notion about end-user perceptions that the privacy preserving LBS should address. According to research individuals, (actual) disclosure behaviour is significantly impacted by trust perceptions. Hence, this paper formulates a research model that identifies the dimensions of end-user trust in LBS. Proposed model will work twofold - (1) providing a tenable ground for design and development of more robust user-centric LBS privacy preserving mechanisms and, (2) furnishing guidelines for LBS providers wanting to preserve end-user privacy; by gaining natural trust in relationship to reduce concerns.