Exploring the Effects of Information Security & Privacy on Blockchain Mobile Applications Rating: Text Analytics Approach

The widespread use of mobile technology has motivated Blockchain developers and users to embrace and adopt mobile blockchain technologies. Enabling users to utilize mobile devices for accessing blockchain services and manage digital assets that offer numerous benefits. However, risks regarding the system use and users' concerns about their information security and privacy also arise. This paper investigates how blockchain apps' perceived security and privacy levels affect the ratings of the app on online platforms. A dataset of 116 mobile apps that use Blockchain technology was collected to conduct a sentiment analysis for user reviews. Users of blockchain apps are influenced by associating factors revealed in this study and their range in terms of privacy and security expectations and risk perspectives. The app use decision is expanded by the scope of the occurrences in information dispensation where such information has a notable security and privacy effects and blockchain itself guided by how knowledge is gained and experimentally utilized. Security and privacy levels have a significant effect on the ranking of a service app. From the previous results, the first thing we can draw is that a higher level of privacy and security increases the average rating of the app. Secondly, users seem to be more concerned and cautious about the privacy levels of apps compared to security levels. A third finding is that users become more concerned and alert about security and privacy in apps that ask for additional permissions on their devices. Users seem more knowledgeable about apps and their use, proving knowledge level influences users' decision to engage in blockchain apps use. In conclusion, as Mobile apps become more ubiquitous, apps privacy and security will have a stronger relationship with users' initial decision to install the app and long-term decision to use it. Developers that contradict what users find secure trigger a bad first impression and damage user's expectations. There is a need for a balance between providing more functionalities and keep the apps safe and secure. We draw some managerial and practical implications from this study. First, security and privacy play an important role in how users perceive the app and thus affect their evaluation of the app. Developers should pay close attention to what type of functionalities they add to their apps. If the app functionalities are not fully developed or request additional unneeded information from the app, that will negatively affect the user's perception and thus affect how they rate the app. This research contributes to the existing literature on mobile apps by better understanding how privacy and security affect the success of apps in the digital market. These contributions will enrich the existing information systems literature and research associated with mobile blockchain and cryptocurrency applications. The inability to compare the data results to the opinion of those that never participated in reviews, as well as the reviewing users being a good and fair representation of the sample, could represent a limitation to our research and conclusions. Awareness seminars and campaigns about blockchain should be considered and applied by apps providers in raising awareness and its overall impact among apps providers and decision-makers so that more apps users and reviewers gain more sight, knowledge, and confidence about the use and benefits of apps to motivate users to engage as well as include major benchmarks to help create a more open discussion. Within this given parameter, it is clear awareness is fundamental and is based on an informed point of view, thus helping to illustrate and evaluate the positive and negative aspects of using blockchain apps. Since different theories link sociological and personality factors to financial decision making, further studies could be done to see their impact on blockchain apps use as well.