How Can Personality Influence Perception on Security of Context-Aware Applications?

[Context and Motivation] Our lives are being transformed by context-aware software applications with important social, environmental, and economic implications. [Question/Problem] Experts recognized that quality attributes, e.g. security, are the cornerstone to get healthy social implications of these applications. However, do end-users (service consumers) perceive these attributes as so important? [Methodology] To answer this question, we designed a survey, to understand how end-users perceive security of context-aware software applications and how the users’ personality traits might influence their perceptions. To this end, we did a web-based survey that embeds two animated-demonstration videos in order to present i) the functionality of a context-aware mobile app, and ii) some vulnerabilities of the mobile app. It involved 48 subjects divided in two groups: subjects with software engineering (SE) background (Group A) and subjects without any SE background (Group B). [Results] Our study found that the importance of confidentiality and integrity is more clearly perceived by subjects with SE backgrounds (Group A). Accountability is more difficult to be perceived by subjects. And this difficulty can be even more pronounced for subjects without any SE background (Group B). Our findings suggest that importance preferences on security are influenced by personality types. For instance, open-minded people have a higher propensity to perceive the importance of confidentiality and integrity. Whilst, people with a high level of agreeableness hold quite different perceptions regarding the importance of authenticity and accountability. Analyzing the level of association between personality and the perceived importance on security, we found that the importance perceptions on confidentiality are influenced by the personality of subjects from Group B. And, the changes (positive an negative) in the importance perception on confidentiality are very strongly influenced by personality, even more so by the personality of subjects from Group B.