Effect of Privacy Concern, Risk, and Information Control in a Smart Tourism Destination

The smart tourism industry is growing, with the use and application of technology to make travel more enjoyable, but the information privacy concerns of today’s tourists obtained by the big data available to the destination and service providers constitute a major problem for smart tourism. The issue of data privacy can affect the sustainability and economic gains of the various smart tourism destinations around the world. This study investigates privacy concerns, perceived risk, control of information, service provider trusts in a smart tourism destination, and the resulting behavioral intentions. The results were obtained using an online survey of 384 respondents that have visited Dubai, one of the world’s most popular smart tourism destinations. The results showed that using context as an environmental factor is helpful to mitigate the tourists' negative privacy concerns and perceived risk towards trust in a smart tourism destination. Therefore, previous privacy violation experience as a personal factor is a risk that is negatively related to trust in the smart tourism destination and the service providers. The study provides meaningful and applicable contributions on smart tourism to destination management organizations (DMO’s) and service providers on what influences and mitigates the privacy concern of today’s tourists using mobile application location-based services available in a smart tourism destination, building on the social cognitive theory and risk-benefit analysis of the privacy calculus theory.