Simply tell me how -- On Trustworthiness and Technology Acceptance of Attribute-Based Credentials

TL;DR

This study investigates how intrinsic and presentation factors influence trustworthiness and acceptance of Attribute-Based Credential Systems through controlled experiments, identifying key communication strategies that enhance adoption.

Contribution

It provides the first causal evidence, via a structural equation model, of how specific communication factors impact trust and acceptance of ACS technology.

Findings

Communicating simplicity and everyday usage positively affect acceptance.

Facilitating conditions and demonstrating results increase trustworthiness and behavioral intent.

First causal, structural model linking communication factors to ACS acceptance.

Abstract

Attribute-based Credential Systems (ACS) have been long proposed as privacy-preserving means of attribute-based authentication, yet neither been considered particularly usable nor found wide-spread adoption, to date. To establish what variables drive the adoption of \ACS as a usable security and privacy technology, we investigated how intrinsic and presentation properties impact their perceived trustworthiness and behavioral intent to adopt them. We conducted two confirmatory, fractional-factorial, between-subject, random-controlled trials with a total UK-representative sample of $N = 812$ participants. Each participant inspected one of 24 variants of Anonymous Credential System Web site, which encoded a combination of three intrinsic factors (\textsf{provider}, \textsf{usage}, \textsf{benefits}) and three presentation factors (\textsf{simplicity}, presence of \textsf{people}, level of available \textsf{support}). Participants stated their privacy and faith-in-technology subjective norms before the trial. After having completed the Web site inspection, they reported on the perceived trustworthiness, the technology adoption readiness, and their behavioral intention to follow through. We established a robust covariance-based structural equation model of the perceived trustworthiness and technology acceptance, showing that communicating facilitating conditions as well as demonstrating results drive the overall acceptance and behavioral intent. Of the manipulated causal variables, communicating with simplicity and on the everyday usage had the greatest and most consistently positive impact on the overall technology acceptance. After earlier correlational empirical research on ACS technology acceptance, ours is the first research showing cause-effect relations in a structural latent factor model with substantial sample size.