Experimental insights on consumer data sharing behaviour

Abstract

In the online world we regularly pay with our data. Yet, it is not readily understood how much we value certain data types and in which contexts. Are we able to determine the value of our data like we do for money? Only if we know individual valuations, can fitting policies be formulated. In the quest of tailoring legal reforms to the individuals’ needs, many questions still need answering. For instance, people may not mind that certain data of theirs is shared in some situations, whilst in other situations and for other types of data they do. There is a certain element of reciprocity present with direct sharing of others’ data that deserves our attention in the sense that one may be ready to accept some data sharing if those sharing would likewise tolerate this. However, in which contexts would this be the case? A fruitful path to provide some of these answers is experimental research, where ideally in an incentivised setting – that means that participants are paid depending on the choices made during the experiment and, therefore, show true behaviour – individual behaviour is tested and observed. There is a lot of research seeking to identify individuals’ valuations for data and privacy. Experimental findings show how the perception of harm varies with a view to different types of data. But also who receives the data, for instance, makes a difference. Context matters as a data leak might lead to harm in some situations but not in others.