If You Are Happy And You Know It, Say "I'M Here": Investigating Parents' Location-Sharing Preferences

A diary approach was used to explore location-sharing preferences of 126 parents with young children with the goal of investigating which elements play a role in their decision to share their location. During a 3-week user study, we daily collected parents' preferences of location sharing along with data related to the physical and social context, their interest in socializing with other parents and their emotional states. Our analysis points out several insights for this previously underexplored user group. In particular, our results suggest a relative greater importance of the context, both physical and social, with respect to individual traits such as personality, trust dispositions, and demographic characteristics. Moreover positive and negative emotions seem to influence the intention to share location information in a peculiar way: positive moods like happiness seem to encourage private sharing with selected people such as partner, relatives, friends and nearby parents, yet, when parents experience a negative mood, such as being worried, angry or sad, their intention to share publicly on the web is higher.