Privacy and gender: reviewing women's attitudes towards privacy in the context of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and Location Based Services (LBS)

Cottrill, C. and Thakuriah, P. (2009) Privacy and gender: reviewing women's attitudes towards privacy in the context of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and Location Based Services (LBS). In: 4th International Congress on Women's Issues in Transportation, Irvine, CA, USA, 27-30 Oct 2009, pp. 117-126.

Abstract

Limited previous research has shown that women value online privacy more than men, potentially influencing their online behavior or willingness to reveal personal data online. New generations of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and location-based services (LBS) technologies depend on the input of personalized and localized information to give, potentially, information that may uniquely address women’s complex travel patterns, but which may raise locational privacy concerns for women and cause them to hesitate to share the needed information. This paper examines gender differences in the propensity to reveal the potentially sensitive information necessary to make ITS and LBS highly personalized to individual travelers. The authors develop privacy indicators based on refusals to answer sociodemographic and location questions in a household travel survey to evaluate whether women have a significantly different attitude toward willingness to share data related to position and personal identifiers compared with men. The results show that gender differences regarding privacy preferences are not statistically significant. However, this result is inconclusive because the survey overall achieved low response rates and participating households may already be self-selected into being open about divulging sensitive travel and locational information.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Thakuriah, Professor Piyushimita
• Authors: Cottrill, C., and Thakuriah, P.
• Subjects: G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > G Geography (General); H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General); H Social Sciences > HE Transportation and Communications; H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman; T Technology > T Technology (General)
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Urban Studies