How privacy concerns impact Swedish citizens’ willingness to report crimes: a quantitative mobile phone survey

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify whether there is a lower willingness to report a crime if a victim must hand in their mobile phone as evidence. If that is the case, the research seeks to examine whether privacy concerns and lower willingness correlate with one another and thereby investigate whether privacy concerns could lead to fewer crimes being reported and resolved. Design/methodology/approach A mobile phone survey was distributed to 400 Swedish adults to identify their hypothetical willingness to report certain crimes with and without handing in their mobile phones as evidence. The results were then analysed using inferential statistics. Findings The result suggests that there is no meaningful correlation between privacy attitudes and willingness to report crime when the handover of a mobile phone is necessary. The results of this study however show a significant lower willingness to report crimes when the mobile phone must be handed in. Research limitations/implications Because the chosen target group were Swedish adults, the research results may lack generalisability for other demographics. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test other demographics. Originality/value This paper’s contribution is the novel exploration of attitudes and behaviours regarding the combination of privacy, digital forensics, mobile phones and crime reportage. This research effort examined the problematic situation that can arise for victims of crime, the invasion of privacy when providing evidence by handing in a mobile phone to the police’s forensic unit for examination.