Christoph Lutz | Bi Norwegian Business School (original) (raw)

Papers by Christoph Lutz

Big Data & Society, 2024

The growing trend of collecting data about individuals to track past actions and infer future att... more The growing trend of collecting data about individuals to track past actions and infer future attitudes and behaviors has fueled popular and scholarly interest in the erosion of privacy. Recent shifts in technologies around machine learning and artificial intelligence have intensified these concerns. This editorial introduces the articles in the special theme on digital resignation and privacy cynicism: concepts developed in the past decade to explain the growing powerlessness individuals feel in relation to their digital privacy even as they continue to experience consternation over the collection and use of their personal information. The papers in this special theme engage and extend existing research on these topics. The original articles and commentaries pose theoretical and practical questions related to the ways people confront the powerful institutional forces that increasingly shape many aspects of the information environment. They employ several methodologies and theoretical perspectives and extend the range of geographic, political, cultural, and institutional contexts in which privacy cynicism and digital resignation can be identified and examined. In addition to contextualizing these contributions, this editorial maps a range of related concepts including digital resignation, privacy cynicism, privacy apathy, surveillance realism, privacy fatigue, and privacy helplessness. It concludes by identifying key themes across the papers in this collection and provides directions for future research.

Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 2021

While the privacy implications of social robots have been increasingly discussed and privacy-sens... more While the privacy implications of social robots have been increasingly discussed and privacy-sensitive robotics is becoming a research field within human–robot interaction, little empirical research has investigated privacy concerns about robots and the effect they have on behavioral intentions. To address this gap, we present the results of an experimental vignette study that includes antecedents from the privacy, robotics, technology adoption, and trust literature. Using linear regression analysis, with the privacy-invasiveness of a fictional but realistic robot as the key manipulation, we show that privacy concerns affect use intention significantly and negatively. Compared with earlier work done through a survey, where we found a robot privacy paradox, the experimental vignette approach allows for a more realistic and tangible assessment of respondents' concerns and behavioral intentions, showing how potential robot users take into account privacy as consideration for future...

Science and Engineering Ethics, 2020

In this article, we develop the concept of Transparency by Design that serves as practical guidan... more In this article, we develop the concept of Transparency by Design that serves as practical guidance in helping promote the beneficial functions of transparency while mitigating its challenges in automated-decision making (ADM) environments. With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and the ability of AI systems to make automated and self-learned decisions, a call for transparency of how such systems reach decisions has echoed within academic and policy circles. The term transparency, however, relates to multiple concepts, fulfills many functions, and holds different promises that struggle to be realized in concrete applications. Indeed, the complexity of transparency for ADM shows tension between transparency as a normative ideal and its translation to practical application. To address this tension, we first conduct a review of transparency, analyzing its challenges and limitations concerning automated decision-making practices. We then look at the lessons learned from the devel...

International Journal of Social Robotics, 2019

Social robots, those that exhibit personality and communicate with us using high-level dialogue a... more Social robots, those that exhibit personality and communicate with us using high-level dialogue and natural cues, will soon be part of our daily lives. In this paper, we gather expert opinions from different international workshops exploring ethical, legal, and social (ELS) concerns associated with social robots. In contrast to literature that looks at specific challenges, often from a certain disciplinary angle, our contribution to the literature provides an overview of the ELS discussions in a holistic fashion, shaped by active deliberation with a multitude of experts across four workshops held between 2015 and 2017 held in major international workshops (ERF, NewFriends, JSAI-isAI). It also explores pathways to address the identified challenges. Our contribution is in line with the latest European robot regulatory initiatives but covers an area of research that the latest AI and robot governance strategies have scarcely covered. Specifically, we highlight challenges to the use of ...

Big Data & Society, 2019

Transparency is now a fundamental principle for data processing under the General Data Protection... more Transparency is now a fundamental principle for data processing under the General Data Protection Regulation. We explore what this requirement entails for artificial intelligence and automated decision-making systems. We address the topic of transparency in artificial intelligence by integrating legal, social, and ethical aspects. We first investigate the ratio legis of the transparency requirement in the General Data Protection Regulation and its ethical underpinnings, showing its focus on the provision of information and explanation. We then discuss the pitfalls with respect to this requirement by focusing on the significance of contextual and performative factors in the implementation of transparency. We show that human–computer interaction and human-robot interaction literature do not provide clear results with respect to the benefits of transparency for users of artificial intelligence technologies due to the impact of a wide range of contextual factors, including performative ...

IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, 2019

Journal of Business Research, 2024

With the emergence of the digital economy, the occupational landscape in many countries has under... more With the emergence of the digital economy, the occupational landscape in many countries has undergone major transformations. While scholars have started to study the working conditions of digital economy occupations such as app-based food delivery couriers and social media influencers, assessing societal perceptions of these occupations remains uncharted territory. This article provides a substantive contribution through an in-depth analysis of occupational prestige and occupational social value perceptions across 76 UK digital economy occupations. Leveraging two expansive surveys with more than 2400 respondents, the findings show that these nascent occupations tend to have modest prestige, and that their perceived social value is lower than that of analogous non-digital occupations. Socioeconomic factors and attitudes foster variability in societal perceptions. The research thus advances a nuanced understanding of the evolving digital economy, providing evidence for fellow researchers, policymakers, and the larger public, for whom the results help contextualize career choices and occupational identities.

Technology in Society, 2024

Short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb have enjoyed considerable success in recent years. How... more Short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb have enjoyed considerable success in recent years. However, critics accuse the platforms of having negative impacts, leading to gentrification, disruption, and increased rent and house prices. While research has investigated actual impacts of short-term rental platforms, we lack systematic, generalizable, and comparative evidence on the perceived impacts of such platforms, especially from a social exchange perspective and on a country level. To address these shortcomings, we conducted a representative survey in the US and UK with a holistic set of perceived impacts. Using social exchange theory (SET) and applying a range of multi-variate statistical analyses, such as exploratory factor analysis, cluster analysis and discriminant analysis, we systematically compare these two contexts. The findings indicate that US residents assess short-term rental platforms more positively than UK residents, especially for recreational, amenities-oriented and economic impacts. Among respondents who have used short-term rental platforms as guests, the perceptions are more alike between the two countries, suggesting a homogenization effect. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the results.

Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 2024

Sociological research has long been interested in occupational evaluation. However, occupational ... more Sociological research has long been interested in occupational evaluation. However, occupational research remains hampered by conceptual ambiguity and methodological problems. To address these issues, we present new indices of occupational prestige and occupational social value for 576 occupation titles aligned with the ILO International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08). A shorter core list with 130 occupation titlesone per ISCO-08 minor groupis also provided. Based on comprehensive and recent evidence from 2429 respondents, we carve out the evaluative landscape of occupations in the United Kingdom. We show how occupational prestige and occupational social value are correlated but distinct. A clear hierarchy appears, with highly educated occupations at the top and stigmatised or illicit occupations at the bottom. The study thus contributes to social stratification research and encourages reuse of the scores in future occupational research.

Big Data & Society, 2024

A growing body of research highlights a trend toward widespread attitudes of privacy cynicism, ap... more A growing body of research highlights a trend toward widespread attitudes of privacy cynicism, apathy and resignation among Internet users. In this work, we extend these discussions by concentrating on the concept of user agency. Specifically, we examine how five types of structural constraints-interpersonal, cultural, technological, economic and political-restrict user agency and contribute to the prevalence of privacy cynicism as a common response. Drawing on critical data studies and adopting an intersectional lens, we demonstrate how these constraints disproportionately impact various social groups unequally, leading to a disparate distribution of agency and privacy cynicism. Furthermore, we contend that the sense of powerlessness engendered by excessive constraints on user agency can, in turn, exacerbate user vulnerability to such constraints, potentially initiating a vicious cycle of disempowerment. The article enriches the field of privacy research by linking the traditionally individual-focused and psychological dimensions of privacy with critical surveillance studies and by proposing potential interventions to mitigate privacy cynicism.

Journal of Travel Research, 2024

Following the recent rise of digital nomadism, this study explores changing patterns of travel an... more Following the recent rise of digital nomadism, this study explores changing patterns of travel and work among highly mobile individuals. We draw on liquid modernity theory to analyze data from Reddit's r/digitalnomad subreddit over 3.5 years. Fifteen topics and seven clusters capture the rich discussions. The most discussed topic was Destination review and recommendation, followed by Emotional needs and lifestyle choice. Regulatory issues also emerged as a significant concern. The pandemic influenced sentiment fluctuations over time, but the tone of topics remained mostly neutral. Our research provides nuanced insights into digital nomads' habits, concerns, and lifestyle choices, showing how travel-related aspects feature front and center. For the tourism industry, our findings offer actionable suggestions to cater to this dynamic and economically powerful traveler group. Finally, and as a theoretical contribution, the study enhances our understanding of the role of global disruptive events, such as pandemics, in liquid modernity.

American Behavioral Scientist, 2017

Sociological studies show that Internet access, skills, uses, and outcomes vary between different... more Sociological studies show that Internet access, skills, uses, and outcomes vary between different population segments. However, we lack differentiated statistical evidence of the social characteristics of users of distinct social media platforms. We address this issue using a representative survey of Great Britain and investigate the social characteristics of six major social media platforms. We find that age and socioeconomic status are driving forces of several—but not all—of these platforms. The findings suggest that no social media platform is representative of the general population. The unrepresentativeness has major implications for research that uses social media as a data source. Social media data cannot be used to generalize to any population other than themselves.

Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, Nov 19, 2021

ILO Working Paper, 2024

Despite initial research about the biases and perceptions of Large Language Models (LLMs), we lac... more Despite initial research about the biases and perceptions of Large Language Models (LLMs), we lack evidence on how LLMs evaluate occupations, especially in comparison to human evaluators. In this paper, we present a systematic comparison of occupational evaluations by GPT-4 with those from an in-depth, high-quality and recent human respondents survey in the United Kingdom. Covering the full ISCO-08 occupational landscape, with 580 occupations and two distinct metrics (prestige and social value), our findings indicate that GPT-4 and human scores are highly correlated across all ISCO-08 major groups. In absolute terms, GPT-4 scores are more generous than those of the human respondents. At the same time, GPT-4 substantially under -or overestimates the occupational prestige and social value of many occupations, particularly for emerging digital and stigmatized occupations. Our analyses show both the potentials and risks of using LLM-generated data for sociological and occupational research. Potentials include LLMs’ efficiency, cost effectiveness, speed, and accuracy in capturing general tendencies. By contrast, there are risks of bias, contextual misalignment, and downstream issues, for example when problematic and opaque occupational evaluations of LLMs may feed back into working life, thus leading to potentially problematic technological constructions of society. We also discuss the policy implications of our findings for the integration of LLM tools into the world of work.

Academy of Management Global Proceedings, Jun 15, 2018

The professed ethos of collaboration among the sharing economy does not extend to the provider ba... more The professed ethos of collaboration among the sharing economy does not extend to the provider base, who largely offer their services in a distributed and disconnected fashion. Sharing platforms, which mediate between users, neither enable nor encourage interaction between providers, restricting a sense of provider class-consciousness and the fundamental first steps towards collective action. Providers, separated both through platform narratives and architectures, nevertheless do variably take part in collective action, such as online communication and even attempted unions. In this study, we addressed the topic of collective action and class-consciousness among the heterogeneous provider base of the sharing economy, using a cluster analysis to determine four distinct clusters: Self-Oriented Pragmatists, Collective Action Enthusiasts, Modern Collectivists, and Collective Action Opponents.

Social Science Research Network, 2018

Academy of Management Global Proceedings, Jun 15, 2018

Sharing economy platforms have contributed to the global economy by opening up previously un-tapp... more Sharing economy platforms have contributed to the global economy by opening up previously un-tapped sources of income. However, the on-demand nature of many dominant sharing economy platforms probl...

Big Data & Society, 2024

Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 2021

Science and Engineering Ethics, 2020

International Journal of Social Robotics, 2019

Big Data & Society, 2019

IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, 2019

Journal of Business Research, 2024

Technology in Society, 2024

Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 2024

Big Data & Society, 2024

Journal of Travel Research, 2024

American Behavioral Scientist, 2017

Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, Nov 19, 2021

ILO Working Paper, 2024

Academy of Management Global Proceedings, Jun 15, 2018

Social Science Research Network, 2018

Academy of Management Global Proceedings, Jun 15, 2018

Academic social network sites (SNS) have gained enormous ground over the last years. The biggest ... more Academic social network sites (SNS) have gained enormous ground over the last years. The biggest services ResearchGate, Mendeley and Academia.edu all have much more than 1 million members and the numbers are rapidly increasing. However, only limited research has been carried out on social media in science (Nentwich & König, 2012). Although a vivid community creates and implements alternative measures of scientific impact with social media data (Altmetrics; Priem & Hemminger, 2011), little use has been made of academic SNS to analyze scientific communities.
Our aim is twofold: Firstly, we outline the state of research on and with scientific SNS. We show how such data is useful both to enhance our knowledge in the sociology of science and for practical purposes. Secondly, we present preliminary results of a research project with ResearchGate. Drawing on data from this SNS we describe the scholarly network of the Business Innovation area of the University of St. Gallen.

This presentation tries to answer the question: Are beneficial, happy accidents – serendipity – m... more This presentation tries to answer the question: Are beneficial, happy accidents – serendipity – more likely to occur among more participatory Internet users? And among users with larger and more diverse social networks as well as more trust? It derives a research framework to relate digital serendipity, online trust, and participation on the Internet.

"Millions of researchers all around the world have profiles on academic social network sites, suc... more "Millions of researchers all around the world have profiles on academic social network sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, or Mendeley. Still these channels are hardly used for impact assessment. While scientific impact has traditionally been measured with bibliometrics, social media provide new avenues for influence measurement (Altmetrics). We focus on one specific type of social media, namely academic social network sites. How can such platforms provide insights into scientific impact and add to Altmetrics? To answer this question, we rely on a social network analysis of a research community on ResarchGate. The underlying data was provided by the platform provider. It contains detailed interaction and publication information of 55 faculty members of a Swiss public university. We apply a structural perspective and use centrality measures as core indicators of influence within the network.
Our analysis proceeds in three steps: First, we describe the network structure in terms of classical SNA metrics. Second, we analyze whether researchers’ network centrality is associated with other metrics of influence, namely: (a) activity on the platform (b) traditional metrics of scholarly influence (i.e. mainly bibliographic criteria), and (c) academic position. Third, we compare the network structure with that of participants' co-authorship pattern.
Our findings show that activity on the platform is the best predictor of impact within the network, while publication success and academic play less of a role. Implications for research and practice are provided."

Becoming a Platform in Europe: On the Governance of the Collaborative Economy, 2021

The sharing economy is a relevant economic phenomenon of recent times and important for sustainab... more The sharing economy is a relevant economic phenomenon of recent times and important for sustainable economic growth. This chapter considers the motivational factors that drive and hinder participation in the sharing economy. It investigates the impact of both economic or non-economic drivers and what role demographics, attitudinal and behavioural characteristics play as antecedents of those drivers. We rely on rich data from a 12-country survey to conduct our analysis, and we distinguish between three categories of respondents: providers, consumers and aware non-users. Trust, innovativeness and materialism are considered as important attitudinal antecedents, while volunteering is used as the key behavioural antecedent. We find that economic motives outperform noneconomic motives overall. However, compared with providers and aware non-users, consumers are more strongly driven by economic motives, especially those who are more educated and trusting. Additionally, younger, more educated, more innovative, materialistic and volunteering respondents are driven more than others by non-economic motives. Finally, providers with lower household income, who are more educated and innovative are more likely to be driven by economic motives, while providers that have more trust in people and volunteer more frequently are more likely to be driven by non-economic motives. Overall, the chapter contributes to a more differentiated understanding of participation in the sharing economy in terms of motives and their antecedents. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of the findings.

Digitale Öffentlichkeit(en), Mar 31, 2015

Viele Personen sorgen sich um ihre Privatsphäre im Internet. Gleichzeitig zeigen wissenschaftlich... more Viele Personen sorgen sich um ihre Privatsphäre im Internet. Gleichzeitig zeigen wissenschaftliche Studien, dass ein Grossteil davon private Informationen veröffentlicht und sehr offen mit persönlichen Daten umgeht. Diese Diskrepanz zwischen Einstellungen und Verhalten wird durch das Privacy Paradox beschrieben. Der gängigste Erklärungsansatz für das Privacy Paradox ist der Rational Choice Approach, wonach Nutzer die Vor- und Nachteile der Datenpreisgabe im Internet abwägen und dementsprechend entscheiden. Diese Perspektive ist teilweise empirisch bestätigt worden, hat aber Schwächen, zum Beispiel die mangelnde Berücksichtigung nicht-rationaler Aspekte. In diesem Sinne bauen wir unser Argument auf die Sozialtheorie von Ferdinand Tönnies auf. Das Privacy Paradox zeigt sich als gar nicht mehr so paradox, sobald man es mit der Tönniesschen Dualität von Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft betrachtet: Wo Individuen auf der Suche nach einer Gemeinschaftserfahrung sind, legen sie wenig Wert auf Privatsphäre, auch wenn sie diese rational abstrakt als wichtig erachten. Die Suche nach Gemeinschaft scheint stärker zu sein als die Abgrenzung von anderen Individuen im Sinne von Gesellschaft.

Mensch und Maschine - Symbiose oder Parasitismus? (Schriften der Assistierenden der Universität St.Gallen), Jan 12, 2015

This book chapter develops a mulit-layered privacy interaction framework to account for the socia... more This book chapter develops a mulit-layered privacy interaction framework to account for the social embeddedness of online privacy. Drawing on Urie Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, we analyze informational privacy on the Internet on four layers: the micro-system, the exo-system, the meso-system and the macro-system. The micro-system encompasses the individual and its psychological decisions; the exo-system relates to Internet companies and organizations; the meso-system describes cultural and temporal aspects; and the macro-system deals with legal and regulatory questions. Privacy on each layer is first analyzed independently and then as a series of interactions between the different layers. Each interaction is illustrated with a current example. The chapter concludes with a range of theoretical and practical implications. It is one of the first attempts to conceptualize online privacy as a multi-level and multi-dimensional phenomenon.

Researching the Changing Profession of Public Relations, 2013

The book chapter discusses the findings of a quantitative investigation into the work roles of Eu... more The book chapter discusses the findings of a quantitative investigation into the work roles of European communication professionals. In particular, our research investigates whether the manager-technician typology, developed in previous role research, still captures the reality of modern communication work, and whether there are any differences in the European context compared to the United States, where most research on practitioner roles has been done to date. Based on structural equation modeling, we show that several assumptions from this stream of research do not hold up to the scrutiny of modern statistical methods. Instead, we propose a more modest interpretation, first of which roles modern communication practitioners actually enact, and second how these roles relate to job satisfaction, managerial input and gender differences in the field.

Multinationale Unternehmen und Institutionen im Wandel – Herausforderungen für Wirtschaft, Recht und Gesellschaft, Dec 10, 2013

This contribution provides a new avenue to the privacy paradox - the divergence between attitudes... more This contribution provides a new avenue to the privacy paradox - the divergence between attitudes and behavior when it comes to online privacy. Our approach rests on research in online trust and on the theory of public value as well as Tönnies' duality of "Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft". We show with representative data from 2012 that the very providers of Internet and mobile services – web companies and telecommunication providers – enjoy very low levels of trust in terms of privacy protection. Even before the PRISM scandal Swiss people distrusted these organizations. By contrast, financial institutions, the public service, and government enjoy high levels of (data protection) trust. We find that the privacy paradox in Switzerland is a trust problem rather than a concern problem. Implications for theory and practice are derived.

Millions of people all over the world participate in various online contexts and create content v... more Millions of people all over the world participate in various online contexts and create content via blogs, wikis, personal homepages, online communities or social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. Social scientists are increasingly researching the forms, drivers and consequences of such online participation, understood as the creation and sharing of content on the Internet addressed to a specific audience and driven by a social purpose. However, most research focuses on political participation on the Internet and its impact on the offline world, neglecting newer and more fluid activities. Furthermore, the nascent field of online participation research is very fragmented and atheoretical. This dissertation addresses these problems and investigates online participation from a holistic perspective, taking a sociological and digital divide approach and going beyond political participation and civic engagement. It proceeds in four steps. First, a systematic literature review is conducted to assess the current state-of-research and to derive a typology of online participation. Five areas of online participation are distinguished: political and civic participation, business participation, cultural participation, educational participation, and health participation. Second, salient drivers of online participation are researched from a social cognitive perspective. This contribution shows that cognitive factors, namely privacy concerns and online self-efficacy, partly mediate the effect of demographic antecedents (age, gender) and education on different forms of online participation. Third, German users' online participation patterns are differentiated along social milieus. This contribution expands notions of the digital and participation divide with a cultural perspective. Fourth, the single contributions are brought together into a coherent structure and reflected in theoretical terms within the framing chapter as well as the conclusion. The main theoretical contribution of the thesis consists of a thorough analysis of previous research on online participation -- including the central aspect of participation divides -- and a carefully derived definition of the concept. This understanding challenges previous understandings by being largely descriptive instead of normative and by considering a myriad of forms of online participation, going beyond the political. The main empirical contribution of the dissertation lies in a theoretically substantiated, multi-method investigation of the participation divides in Germany, a country where little research on that topic exists.

Technology in Society, 2024

Short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb have enjoyed considerable success in recent years. How... more Short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb have enjoyed considerable success in recent years. However, critics accuse the platforms of having negative impacts, leading to gentrification, disruption, and increased rent and house prices. While research has investigated actual impacts of short-term rental platforms, we lack systematic, generalizable, and comparative evidence on the perceived impacts of such platforms, especially from a social exchange perspective and on a country level. To address these shortcomings, we conducted a representative survey in the US and UK with a holistic set of perceived impacts. Using social exchange theory (SET) and applying a range of multi-variate statistical analyses, such as exploratory factor analysis, cluster analysis and discriminant analysis, we systematically compare these two contexts. The findings indicate that US residents assess short-term rental platforms more positively than UK residents, especially for recreational, amenitiesoriented and economic impacts. Among respondents who have used short-term rental platforms as guests, the perceptions are more alike between the two countries, suggesting a homogenization effect. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the results.