Attitudes towards Sharing Personal Data: a Discrete Choice Experiment

Personal data is key for the digital economy, underpinning business models and service provision. This information has value to businesses, the government and third parties, yet it is not clear what value this personal data has to consumers themselves. Much of the digital economy is predicated on people sharing personal data, however if individuals value their privacy, they may choose to withhold this data unless the perceived benefits of sharing outweigh the perceived value of keeping the data private. Further, they might be willing to pay for an otherwise free service if paying allowed them to avoid sharing their data. We used responses from a nationally representative sample of 2,087 UK residents to estimate public preferences towards sharing different types of personal data with different attributes. For example, we examined the differences in responses when data is shared for different purposes, as well as when it is shared with more or less granular details about identity or location. We found that people prefer to share their data with universities rather than with firms, and demand higher compensation if their data are shared with a higher level of detail, are linked to their identity, or are linked to their exact location. By integrating such preferences into business and regulatory models, we can create fairer and more balanced data sharing models, which can ultimately help people to make better choices about their personal data.