The Impact of Privacy and Security Attitudes and Concerns of Travellers on Their Willingness to Use Mobility-as-a-Service Systems

TL;DR

This study examines whether travellers' privacy and security attitudes influence willingness to use Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS). Using a UK online survey (n=320) and correlational plus regression analyses, the authors find that general privacy concerns do not significantly affect behavioural intentions to use MaaS, but trust in how commercial and governmental websites handle personal data, as well as exposure to information misuse news, positively predict adoption intent. The results suggest that trust-building in MaaS providers and transparent data practices may be more effective for uptake than addressing abstract privacy concerns alone. The work contributes to MaaS literature by highlighting the pivotal role of provider trust and contextual information about misuse in shaping adoption decisions, with practical implications for privacy governance and corporate communication strategies.

Abstract

This paper reports results from an online survey on the impact of travellers' privacy and security attitudes and concerns on their willingness to use mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) systems. This study is part of a larger project that aims at investigating barriers to potential MaaS uptake. The online survey was designed to cover data privacy and security attitudes and concerns as well as a variety of socio-psychological and socio-demographic variables associated with travellers' intentions to use MaaS systems. The study involved $n=320$ UK participants recruited via the Prolific survey platform. Overall, correlation analysis and a multiple regression model indicated that, neither attitudes nor concerns of participants over the privacy and security of personal data would significantly impact their decisions to use MaaS systems, which was an unexpected result, however, their trust in (commercial and governmental) websites would. Another surprising result is that, having been a victim of improper invasion of privacy did not appear to affect individuals' intentions to use MaaS systems, whereas frequency with which one heard about misuse of personal data did. Implications of the results and future directions are also discussed, e.g., MaaS providers are encouraged to work on improving the trustworthiness of their corporate image.