The State or Private Enterprise? — The Shift in Users’ Preference for the Provider of an Identity Wallet
Sandra Kostic, Maija Polkela – 2023
This paper presents the results of user studies based on a de- veloped concept which allows multiple digital identities to be stored in one app. These identities in the so-called identity wallet are managed independently by the user, and the user alone decides which data should be sent to any external ser- vice. The concept was implemented in two prototypes (low and high-fidelity) and evaluated over a two-year-period (from 2020-2022) in three user studies with a total of 44 partici- pants, focusing on trust in this concept. The purpose was to potentially determine a change in trust in the concept over time. Users mentioned the wallet provider as a key influencing factor on trust. In 2020, about half of the participants favored the government as the provider, with the remainder favoring a private company. In May 2022, the high-fidelity prototype was used for the study. This time the majority of participants preferred the government as the provider of the wallet. This trend was confirmed in a study in November 2022 with the low-fidelity prototype, where a majority of participants were in favor of the state as the provider as opposed to only a small number favored a company to take this role. This result interestingly differs from that of the study in 2020 with the same low-fidelity prototype, even though the study was carefully replicated. This suggests a temporal shift in users’ preference in the provider of the wallet.