When Your Choice Affects Others: Preventing Interdependent Privacy Violations in an App Download Context
(A2026-133831)

AUTHORS

Susanne Ruckelshausen, WU Vienna; Bernadette Kamleitner, WU Vienna

ABSTRACT

Eight online experiments and an experimental field study test interventions to reduce consumers' willingness to infringe on others’ privacy, i.e. to share contacts in an app-download context. The interventions vary salient information displayed to the consumer via a pop-up in an app download scenario. The information ranges from specific individual contacts and anthropomorphized icons to telephone numbers. This project examines how human salience and data salience (e.g., telephone numbers) influence consumers’ decisions to grant access to their contacts and investigates the conditions under which they are most effective. It also considers altruistic as well as self-serving motives in gathering insights into the effectiveness of these salience interventions.