Rational disclosure or privacy paradox? Consumer data-sharing in financial app ecosystems

Nicole Jonker () and Hans Brits
Additional contact information
Nicole Jonker: Payments, Cash and Market Infrastructure Division
Hans Brits: Supervision Policy Division, De Nederlandsche Bank

Electronic Markets, 2025, vol. 35, issue 1, No 103, 21 pages

Abstract: Abstract This paper examines whether the “privacy paradox,” i.e., a dichotomy between privacy attitudes and privacy behaviors in online environments, is visible among users of financial apps. Drawing on survey data from Dutch consumers, we refine the Privacy Paradox Metric (PPM) to better distinguish between paradoxical and rational behavior. We find that paradoxical use of financial apps, as measured by the privacy paradox metric, is moderate and that many users seem to make a rational calculation of benefits versus privacy risks. Paradoxical non-use is higher. This could be an efficiency issue, but is not a problem from a risk perspective. Regression analysis shows that app use correlates positively with perceived benefits and negatively with privacy risks, and also suggests that many financial app users do not suffer from immediate gratification bias. In addition, we find that people who vary in general privacy concerns differ in the factors that influence their use of financial apps. This suggests heterogeneity in decision-making across privacy concern levels. Overall, the results rather point to rational than to privacy paradoxical behavior among the users of financial apps.

Keywords: Financial apps; Consumer choice; Personal data; Metric; Privacy paradox; Westin index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D80 G21 G23 G28 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12525-025-00836-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:elmark:v:35:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s12525-025-00836-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ystems/journal/12525

DOI: 10.1007/s12525-025-00836-1

Access Statistics for this article

Electronic Markets is currently edited by Rainer Alt and Hans-Dieter Zimmermann

More articles in Electronic Markets from Springer, IIM University of St. Gallen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().