Abstract
There has been a remarkable increase in the use of public wireless fidelity, popularly called public Wi-Fi, as an important access point to the Internet the world over. Consumers are able to access the Internet from free Wi-Fi provided in restaurants, malls, and airports, using their smartphones. India alone has 300 million of the world's 2.3 billion smartphone users and is expected in 2018 to have 202,000 public Wi-Fi hotspots. This study focuses on private transactions over public Wi-Fi in India. Guided by the modified theory of reasoned action by Triandis (1980), the study looks specifically at the influence of task privacy, Internet trust, and perceived tracking of consumers' decisions to use the public Wi-Fi environment in India for online transactions using their smartphones. The study posits six hypotheses for environmental conditions that facilitate private transactions over public Wi-Fi. The results of a survey questionnaire of 192 post-graduate business students at a prominent college in southern India indicate that task privacy, Internet trust, and perceived tracking are significant in predicting smartphone use for transactional purposes in the public Wi-Fi environment in India. The results show that an individual's need for privacy also moderates Internet trust and perceived tracking. This study contributes to a better understanding of the use of public Wi-Fi for transactions using smartphones and suggests implications for online business.