The impact of privacy concerns on tourists’ data-sharing behaviors: the case of Vietnam

Abstract

As we have seen, today's technological advancement makes everything easier (including posting, sharing, or providing information), which impacts virtually all economic sectors. In particular, the tourism industry in Vietnam - a potential and promising industry, also influenced by the 4.0 technology revolution. As technology advances, the more often tourists share information with travel service providers. However, not everyone is willing to give out their personal information, because within them there is an existing privacy concern. In addition, tourism service suppliers are seen as disregarding customer privacy concerns, while those who use tourism services always wonder about this issue. This has created a gap in the provision of personal information to serve tourism activities in particular, and affects the tourism industry in general. Based on the current context, our group recognized that the relationship between customers' information sharing behavior and privacy concerns is extremely important. Therefore, we decided to carry out this study to fulfill 3 following purposes: Exploring, Evaluating, and Making recommendations to tourism service suppliers. We proposed the theoretical model based on Privacy Calculus Theory, APCO Framework, secondary data and the result of qualitative research. The theoretical model includes factors impacting on tourists’ privacy concerns as well as their willingness to share information. Our research target respondents are people who have used tourism services and live in Ho Chi Minh city. We decided to do both qualitative research and quantitative research. About qualitative research, we in-depth interviewed 2 experts in tourism, a focus group of 4 students and other 4 respondents, including: people who are working or studying in the tourism industry, and people who regularly provide information for tourism services. About quantitative research, we conducted a survey with 423 respondents (live in Ho Chi Minh City). Then we processed the data by using SPSS 20 and AMOS 24 software. Based on the analysis results, we made recommendations for tourism service providers to reduce tourists' privacy concerns and improve tourist’s willingness to share information. Therefore, people can maximize the benefits of both tourists and tourism service suppliers..