The Willingness to Sell Personal Data

Abstract

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Generalized Trust, Need for Cognitive Closure, and the Perceived Acceptability of Personal Data Collection

“…The literature examining information privacy is extensive and interdisciplinary; Acquisti et al (2015) [25], Morando et al (2014) [26], and Smith et al (2011) [18] provide general reviews. Given the economic tradeoffs involved with the decision to share personal information, one subset of studies has explored whether, and how much, people are willing to pay for privacy [12,[27][28][29][30][31]. While the results of these studies point to privacy having measurable values across individuals, the context-dependence of privacy concerns complicates the view that the value of privacy can be assessed like a more simple good [12][13][14][15][17][18][19][20]32,33].…”

Personal Information Disclosure under Competition for Benefits: Is Sharing Caring?

“…We combine both literatures by investigating the interaction of peer comparison and strategic incentives for information sharing, and discover potentially hidden costs. Examining the interplay of these two motives and its consequences in the context of personal data sharing, our paper dynamically adds to research on the economics of privacy (Acquisti et al 2016;Benndorf and Normann 2018;Beresford et al 2012;Jentzsch et al 2012;Tucker 2015). By endogenizing the sharing of personal information, our experiment substantially extends a design by Brandts et al (2006).…”

“…2 Several papers try to measure the economic value of privacy but find ambiguous results (Benndorf and Normann 2018;Beresford et al 2012;Jentzsch et al 2012;Tsai et al 2011). See Farrell (2012) for a discussion regarding the economic properties of privacy and Acquisti et al (2016) and Tucker (2015) for comprehensive surveys on this topic.…”

Does Imperfect Data Privacy Stop People from Collecting Personal Data?

“…Further, the theoretical literature has so far neglected a central aspect concerning privacy regulations: Perfect privacy-as assumed under Consent Law-cannot always be guaranteed; in particular not for centrally collected health data. 6 Imperfect Privacy may result for at least two reasons. First, information about personal health attributes has often to be generated through the help of third parties (e.g., doctors and laboratories conducting medical tests, wearables and smartphone apps etc.)…”

“…5 For further work on genetic testing see also Tabarrok [19], Bardey and De Donder [20] and Hoel and Iversen [21]. 6 See also Kierkegaard [22] who discuss the merits and weaknesses of a centralized European health record system as planned by the European Commission's Directive 2011/24/EU and Peppet [23] for a discussion with respect to legal aspects of privacy institutions. 7 Matthews and Postlewaite [25] focus on sellers' testing behavior in the context of product quality when disclosure of test results is mandatory or voluntary and test results may be beneficial to consumers.…”