Trusting to Learn: Trust and Privacy Issues in Serious Games

Abstract

Organizations are increasingly investing in technology-enhanced learning systems to improve their employees' skills. Serious games are one example; the competitive and fun nature of games is supposed to motivate employee participation. But any system that records employee data raises issues of privacy and trust. In this paper, we present a study on privacy and trust implications of serious games in an organizational context. We present findings from 32 interviews with potential end-users of a serious games platform called TARGET. A qualitative analysis of the interviews reveals that participants anticipate privacy risks for the data generated in game playing, and their decision to trust their fellow employees and managers depends on the presence of specific trust signals. Failure to minimize privacy risks and maximize trust will affect the acceptance of the system and the learning experience -thus undermining the primary purpose for which it was deployed. Game designers are advised to provide mechanisms for selective disclosure of data by players, andorganizations should not use gaming data for appraisal or selection purposes, and clearly communicate this to employees.

Would You Sell Your Mother’s Data? Personal Data Disclosure in a Simulated Credit Card Application

“…the receivers) will interpret it. Believing that data portrays individuals in a fair and accurate manner is an important acceptance factor -from a privacy perspective -of technologies and processes that collect personal data (Culnan, 1993;Malheiros et al, 2011). Metzger (2007) investigated the effect of sensitivity on disclosure and found individuals were more likely to withhold items they found more sensitive.…”

“…Sensitivity of data is generally considered to be related to privacy perceptions (see Adams and Sasse, 2001 for a privacy model in multimedia communications, or Metzger, 2007 for findings in e-commerce). In a study focused on privacy perceptions in serious games, Malheiros et al (2011) also identified perceived outcome of sharing data as an important factor. The emergence of factors in our thematic analysis which have been identified in studies focused on different types of contexts suggest that the process through which individuals assess data requests may be context-independent, which does not mean the assessments themselves are.…”

“Fairly Truthful”: The Impact of Perceived Effort, Fairness, Relevance, and Sensitivity on Personal Data Disclosure

“…Another concern is that data is used in a way that harms the individual who disclosed it. The potential negative consequences of a disclosure can make individuals reticent to part with their personal data or make them perceive a data practice as invasive [18] [21] [27].…”