I am willing to sell my data for… - Drivers of consumers‘ privacy valuation in e-commerce
(A2021-94579)

AUTHORS

Jan Wiezorrek, University of Bremen; Maik Dulle, University of Bremen

ABSTRACT

How can consumers be fairly compensated for giving up personal information in e-commerce? Are service-convenience and personalization viable compensation options? And how do they relate to the sensitivity of the data? In an online experiment with 608 consumers, we measure consumers privacy valuation dependent on these factors. We find that consumers’ don´t accept service-convenience or personalization as fair trading goods for data with high sensitivity (i.e. personal identifiable information). But, high service-convenience in combination with low personalization is accepted as a trading good and significantly lowers consumers’ privacy valuation for data with low sensitivity (i.e. browsing data). Consequently, e-commerce companies should be really careful when asking consumers for sensitive information, as a privacy trade-off is likely assessed as unfair by consumers. Only for data with low sensitivity consumers can be fairly compensated by enhancing their customer experience.