How Does Disabling Cookie Tracking Impact Online News Consumption?

Yufei Shen (), Klaus M. Miller () and Xitong Li ()
Additional contact information
Yufei Shen: Nova School of Business and Economics, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2775-405 Carcavelos, Portugal
Klaus M. Miller: HEC Paris, 78351 Jouy-en-Josas, France
Xitong Li: HEC Paris, 78351 Jouy-en-Josas, France

No 24-08, Working Papers from NET Institute

Abstract: This paper examines the positive impact of disabling cookie tracking on news consumption. Using an individual-week level panel data from a European news website, we find that disabling cookie tracking increases the number of articles read by 54.3% and the number of news categories consumed by 39.7%. These effects remain robust across various models and persist for over four months. During our sample period, the site introduced personalized news recommendations, allowing us to isolate the impact of enhanced privacy control from content personalization. Our findings suggest that the effects of disabling tracking are even more pronounced when content personalization is absent, indicating that perceived privacy control drives users’ increased news consumption. Additionally, we show that users who disable tracking gain less from personalized recommendations. This study provides initial empirical evidence of the positive effects of disabling data tracking in the digital media ecosystem.

Keywords: cookie tracking; news consumption; consumer privacy; online media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 L86 M37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2024-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec and nep-pay
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