Users, Smart Homes, and Digital Assistants: Impact of Technology Experience and Adoption.

Smart Homes are becoming the norm, with manufacturers including connectivity within many home electronics and appliances by default; and these are often controllable through voice-activated digital assistants. Using an online survey of 212 participants, we explore how users' self-reported Technology Experience relates to their perceptions of the data protection done by Smart Home devices, their security and privacy concerns towards Smart Home digital assistants, and their likelihood of adopting mitigation techniques for digital assistants. We found no relation between self-reported Technology Experience and our dependent variables. We also compared adopters to non-adopters to explore differences between the two groups. We found that adopters of Smart Home technology had a higher level of perceived data protection and less overall concern towards the assistants.