The Value of Location Information

A survey on users' willingness-to-pay for privacy in mobility pricing systems

“…There can be many explanations to this scenario but regardless of the motivation, there is a considerable minority who perceive a privacy threat from new technological developments. Likewise, contrary to other surveys conducted to find how much financial value respondents give to their location-privacy (Cvrcek et al, 2006;Danezis et al, 2005), the results from this survey indicates that respondents were not willing to subscribe to rewards programs in exchange for giving up their location tracks. Therefore, to obtain public acceptance, even privacy-aware solutions should cater to public opinion.…”

“…To the authors' knowledge no such initiative has been taken before. Past surveys using psychological and experimental economics techniques have only focused in assessing the extent to which location information is valued by individuals (Acquisti and Grossklags, 2005;Cvrcek et al, 2006;Danezis et al, 2005), but not on their participation and willingness in redesign of privacy-aware positioning solutions. Important issues have been highlighted as a result of this survey, which need further exploration.…”

Understanding the Valuation of Location Privacy: a Crowdsourcing-Based Approach

“…The study did not confirm the results by Danezis et al [21] regarding the movement patterns. Also, in a study by Bernheim et al [23] imitating the survey by Cvrcek et al [7], the expected payment to participate in the study approximately doubled compared to the original findings, further suggesting that finding an absolute value for location privacy might not be the most useful and applicable result from such research.…”

“…Barak et al found that location valuation is dependent on the type of location in sharing in a social context [22]. In a study by Cvrcek et al [7], European university students were asked in an online questionnaire how much they would need to be compensated to participate in a month-long field study, supposedly with the location being tracked during this time. Later, they were told that also a commercial entity would be interested in the data.…”

“…Rather than stating a specific monetary value that is needed in each situation for the location to be shared, we use the location valuation as an attempt to quantify privacy concern, and for evaluating the differences in location sharing patterns. The values per se vary largely from one country to another [7], and quite likely also from one city to another within a country, thus making results regarding the exact value less meaningful.…”