Exploring the Negotiation Behaviors of Owners and Bystanders over Data Practices of Smart Home Devices

Bystanders (i.e., visiting friends, visiting family members, or domestic workers) are often not aware of the data practices in other people’s (i.e., owners’) smart homes, exposing them to privacy risks. One solution to avoid violating bystanders’ privacy is to increase the data practice transparency and facilitate negotiation. In this paper, we designed a negotiation interaction study to explore the behaviors of owners (n1=238 participants assigned with the owner role) and bystanders (n2=222 participants assigned with the bystander role) when negotiating about smart home data practices with the corresponding bystander and owner digital agents. We also asked questions to explore factors that may potentially correlate with or affect the observed negotiation behaviors and outcomes. We found that owner and bystander participants differ in behaviors regarding numbers of rounds of negotiation, final reached preferences, and total number of agreements. We analyzed the correlating factors and predictability of reaching agreements.