Your privacy for a discount? Exploring the willingness to share personal data for personalized offers

Frode Alfnes and Ole Christian Wasenden

Telecommunications Policy, 2022, vol. 46, issue 7

Abstract: This paper explores how willing consumers are to share personal data to receive personalized offers on their mobile (cell in the US) phones using nationwide surveys of mobile users, 16–35 years old, in Norway, Serbia, Malaysia, and Pakistan. We ask respondents about the likelihood they would use three types of personalized advertising services delivered through their mobile operator, with services varying with respect to the level of personal data collected and whether shared with third parties. In all four countries, respondents state that their likelihood of using a personalized ad service decreases when the service uses more personal data or shares the data with third parties. Using a split sample design, we find that introducing a 10% discount on mobile subscriptions for those using the ad service increases the stated likelihood of using the service. We find significant differences in willingness to share personal data attitudes between countries, with respondents in high-income Norway being least willing and those in low-income Pakistan most willing to share personal data. We identify only minor differences between respondents in Serbia and Malaysia, middle-income countries in Europe and Asia. The study contributes to the literature on the willingness to share personal data by including young adult respondents from countries in both Europe and Asia. Furthermore, framing the survey questions in a mobile service context is appreciably closer to telecom reality than most existing experimental studies on sharing of personal data.

Keywords: Personal data; Preference elicitation; Data privacy; Mobile (cell) phone services (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C83 D82 D83 M37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.telpol.2022.102308

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