Abstract
With a view to exploring public policy that promotes consumers’ adoption of digital services while
respecting privacy, we conducted two analyses on adoption behaviors and perceived privacy risk (PPR)
respectively, regarding four digital services: “My number card” (an identity card issued by the government),
the Japanese COVID-19 contact tracing app “COCOA”, smart speaker (SS) and the popular SNS “LINE”.
Datasets had approximately 1400 to 2400 samples, collected by an online survey for telecommunications
users in Japan.
The analysis of adoption behavior revealed significant relationship between PPR measured by subjective
probability, perceived usefulness, subjective diffusion rate and positiveness toward new digital products, and
adoption probability. PPR had a potential impact to change adoption probability from six to a maximum of
ten percentage points.
The analysis of PPR revealed that trust in online business and privacy legislation and perception of higher
frequency of news reports on data leakage were related with decrease of PPR for the services other than SS,
while experience of online trouble was related with PPR’s decrease for SS. Advanced consumer literacy was
also related to PPR’s decrease for the all services.
Increased trust and literacy, decreased risk perception and enhanced adoption can be possible by releasing
“negative” information on troubles to the public, which should be accompanied by information on policy
responses and prevention measures of similar breaches.
