Exploring Tenants' Preferences of Privacy Negotiation in Airbnb

Literature suggests the unmatched or conflicting privacy needs between users and bystanders in smart homes due to their different privacy concerns and priorities. A promising approach to mitigate such conflicts is through negotiation. Yet, it is not clear whether bystanders have privacy negotiation needs and if so, what factors may influence their negotiation intention and how to better support the negotiation to achieve their privacy goals. To answer these questions, we conducted a vignette study that varied across three categorical factors, including device types, device location, and duration of stay with 867 participants in the context of Airbnb. We further examined our participants' preferences regarding with whom, when, how, and why they would like to negotiate their privacy. Our findings showed that device type remained the only factor that significantly influenced our participants' negotiation intention. Additionally, we found our participants' other preferences, such as they preferred to contact Airbnb hosts first to convey their privacy needs through asynchronous channels (e.g., messages and emails). We summarized design implications to fulfill tenants' privacy negotiation needs.