Privacy concerns and willingness to adopt AI products: A cross-country randomized survey experiment

Jerg Gutmann, Laura Brandimarte, Gerd Muehlheusser and Franziska Weber

No 83, ILE Working Paper Series from University of Hamburg, Institute of Law and Economics

Abstract: We examine the trade-off between functionality and data privacy inherent in many AI products by conducting a randomized survey experiment with 1,734 participants from the US and several European countries. Participants' willingness to adopt a hypothetical, AI-enhanced app is measured under three sets of treatments: (i) installation defaults (opt-in vs. opt-out), (ii) salience of data privacy risks, and (iii) regulatory regimes with different levels of data protection. In addition, we study how the willingness to adopt depends on individual attitudes and preferences. We find no effect of defaults or salience, while a regulatory regime with stricter privacy protection increases the likelihood that the app is adopted. Finally, greater data privacy concerns, greater risk aversion, lower levels of trust, and greater skepticism toward AI are associated with a significantly lower willingness to adopt the app.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence; privacy concerns; randomized survey experiment; smart products; technology adoption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D80 D90 K24 L86 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ain
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/313871/1/ile-wp-2025-83.pdf (application/pdf)

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:zbw:ilewps:83

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ILE Working Paper Series from University of Hamburg, Institute of Law and Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().