Autonomy Reshapes How Personalization Affects Privacy Concerns and Trust in LLM Agents

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhang, Zhiping, Zhang, Yi Evie, Shi, Freda, Li, Tianshi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Zhang, Zhiping
Zhang, Yi Evie
Shi, Freda
Li, Tianshi
author_facet Zhang, Zhiping
Zhang, Yi Evie
Shi, Freda
Li, Tianshi
contents LLM agents require personal information for personalization in order to effectively act on users' behalf, but this raises privacy concerns that can discourage data sharing, limiting both the autonomy levels at which agents can operate and the effectiveness of personalization. Yet the expanded design space of agent autonomy also presents opportunities to shape these effects, which remain underexplored. We conducted a $3\times3$ between-subjects experiment ($N=450$) to study how agent autonomy level influences personalization's effects on users' privacy concerns, trust, and willingness to use, as well as the underlying psychological processes. We find that risk-contingent autonomy, where the agent delegates control to users upon detecting potential privacy leakage, through improving users' perceived control, attenuates personalization's adverse effects by reducing the increase in privacy concerns and the decrease in trust. Our results suggest that designing $\textbf{agent's autonomy}$ that supports $\textbf{human autonomy}$ (both in terms of perceived control and oversight effectiveness) helps users benefit from personalization without being deterred by growing privacy concerns, contributing to the development of trustworthy LLM agents.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_04465
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Autonomy Reshapes How Personalization Affects Privacy Concerns and Trust in LLM Agents
Zhang, Zhiping
Zhang, Yi Evie
Shi, Freda
Li, Tianshi
Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
LLM agents require personal information for personalization in order to effectively act on users' behalf, but this raises privacy concerns that can discourage data sharing, limiting both the autonomy levels at which agents can operate and the effectiveness of personalization. Yet the expanded design space of agent autonomy also presents opportunities to shape these effects, which remain underexplored. We conducted a $3\times3$ between-subjects experiment ($N=450$) to study how agent autonomy level influences personalization's effects on users' privacy concerns, trust, and willingness to use, as well as the underlying psychological processes. We find that risk-contingent autonomy, where the agent delegates control to users upon detecting potential privacy leakage, through improving users' perceived control, attenuates personalization's adverse effects by reducing the increase in privacy concerns and the decrease in trust. Our results suggest that designing $\textbf{agent's autonomy}$ that supports $\textbf{human autonomy}$ (both in terms of perceived control and oversight effectiveness) helps users benefit from personalization without being deterred by growing privacy concerns, contributing to the development of trustworthy LLM agents.
title Autonomy Reshapes How Personalization Affects Privacy Concerns and Trust in LLM Agents
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04465