This study explores how different stakeholders understand and negotiate the ethical and social implications of integrating smart doorbell surveillance into residential security. It examines trade-offs between perceived security benefits, convenience, and privacy intrusions, alongside broader concerns such as surveillance creep, crime prevention, and public safety. Against this backdrop, the research considers unintended consequences, including impacts on social trust, community dynamics, and individual autonomy, contributing to debates on responsible technology use in an increasingly surveillance-driven society.

As these devices blur boundaries between public and private space – extending monitoring into shared areas and institutionalising forms of private surveillance – the study highlights concerns relating to privacy, meaningful consent, data governance, and asymmetries of visibility and control.

The research addresses two questions: How do diverse stakeholders interpret the ethical, social, and practical consequences of smart doorbell surveillance? How do these stakeholders balance or negotiate perceived risks and benefits of smart doorbell surveillance in their everyday practices and institutional roles?

Empirically, the study draws on qualitative semi-structured interviews informed by a two-phase design, beginning with a pilot survey of smart-doorbell users and non-primary actors such as delivery personnel and neighbours (54 participants), followed by a broader stakeholder phase involving 97 participants across five groups: primary users and non-primary users, including pedestrians and visitors, technology experts, police forces, and privacy advocates. Conducted in Leicestershire and Cumbria using purposive and snowball sampling, the data are analysed thematically to examine how stakeholders justify, contest, and experience domestic and neighbourhood surveillance.