User Perception of Smart Home Surveillance: An Integrative Review

Smart Home Technologies (SHTs) have recently become popular for a variety of purposes, including healthcare, entertainment, and convenience, among others. While SHT manufacturers promise to provide a range of services relating to home security, health and wellness, automated domestic tasks, entertainment, and beyond, user perceptions vary widely in terms of benefits and drawbacks. Moreover, surveillance studies researchers have warned against normalizing technologies that may exacerbate uneven power dynamics between users and household members, marketing companies, insurance brokers, law enforcement, and others. Through an analysis of the interdisciplinary literature stemming from computer science and engineering, gerontology, the social sciences, and related fields, we explore the extent to which these potential risks and related concerns are reflected upon by smart home users. This scoping review aims to explore SHT user perceptions of privacy attitudes, the purposes of smart home surveillance, risks and benefits, and impacts on home safety. Through our review of sixty-eight relevant studies, we found that many smart home users reported satisfaction over perceived benefits such as an increased sense of safety and home security. Many others displayed limited understandings of data collection practices or expressed privacy concerns. Nonetheless, SHT usage prevailed among these users. Others report a perceived trade-off between privacy and other factors, such as convenience, and some may have resorted to privacy cynicism, a coping mechanism for dealing with ubiquitous surveillance. In order to better understand SHT adoption trends despite concerns, exploring the conflict between user perceptions of privacy, understanding of SHT data collection purposes, risks and benefits, and home safety, is essential.