Voice Activated Personal Assistant: Acceptability of Use in the Public Space

Voice interface is becoming a common feature in mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. Moreover, voice recognition technology is touted to mature and become the default method to control of a variety of interfaces, including mobile devices. Thus, it is critical to understand the factors that influence the use of voice activated applications in the public domain. The present study examined how the perceived acceptability of using the Voice-Activated Personal Assistant (VAPA) in smartphones influences its reported use. Participants were U.S. smartphone users recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Results showed that participants preferred using the VAPA in a private location, such as their home, but even in that environment, they were hesitant about using it to input private or personally identifying information in comparison to more general, non-private information. Participants’ perceived social acceptability of using the VAPA to transmit information in different contexts could explain these preferred usage patterns.