How Arousing Benefits and Ethical Misgivings Affect AI-Based Dating App Adoption: The Roles of Perceived Autonomy and Perceived Risks

AI-based applications (apps) have presented tremendous ethical challenges such as AI biases and privacy breaches, leading to the issue of privacy paradox. The paradox is more salient for dating apps than ordinary shopping apps, as data breaches in dating apps could relate to users’ close social circles such as families and colleagues, suggesting more serious ethical and even legal consequences. Given the limited attention to user’ arousal-ethics paradox, we developed and empirically examined a conceptual framework regarding how the arousing benefits of dating apps, users’ ethical misgivings, users’ perceived autonomy and perceived risks collectively affect their adoption of dating apps. Survey data from 319 construction workers confirmed that arousing benefits are associated with users’ perceived autonomy, which leads to dating apps adoption. In contrast, users’ ethical misgivings, associated with perceived risks, are negatively related to dating app adoption. This study contributes to the interdisciplinary field of privacy paradox that involves big data, artificial intelligence, user experience, and ethics by examining ethical consumption and practical suggestions to AI-based dating app developers.