Will They Use It or Not? Investigating Software Developers’ Intention to Follow Privacy Engineering Methodologies

Abstract

With the increasing concerns over privacy in software systems, there is a growing enthusiasm to develop methods to support the development of privacy aware software systems. Inadequate privacy in software system designs could result in users losing their sensitive data, such as health information and financial information, which may cause financial and reputation loss. Privacy Engineering Methodologies (PEMs) are introduced into the software development processes with the goal of guiding software developers to embed privacy into the systems they design. However, for PEMs to be successful it is imperative that software developers have a positive intention to use PEMs. Otherwise, developers may attempt to bypass the privacy methodologies or use them partially and hence develop software systems that may not protect user privacy appropriately. To investigate the factors that affect software developers’ behavioural intention to follow PEMs, in this article, we conducted a study with 149 software developers. Findings of the study show that the usefulness of the PEM to the developers’ existing work to be the strongest determinant that affects software developers’ intention to follow PEMs. Moreover, the compatibility of the PEM with their way of work and how the PEM demonstrates its results when used were also found to be significant. These findings provide important insights in understanding the behaviour of software developers and how they perceive PEMs. The findings could be used to assist organisations and researchers to deploy PEMs and design PEMs that are positively accepted by software developers.