Abstract
Privacy is increasingly regarded as an important consideration for consumer protection in digital financial services (DFS), with privacy preferences and attitudes governing many online choices and behaviors. However, these preferences remain one of the least understood topics in social science. This problem is even more pronounced in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), since most work on privacy preferences is conducted in the US and Europe.
Privacy considerations may differ significantly in LMICs compared to other rich countries for many reasons. If privacy is considered a luxury, then the significant income disparities between LMICs and richer nations could affect the perceived tradeoffs. Further, intrinsic privacy preferences may differ across countries due to different cultural contexts, political and historical reasons or demographics. The use of DFS in LMICs also differs from countries that digitized earlier. For example, many LMICs moved directly from cash to mobile payments, bypassing credit and debit cards, which could influence the formation of beliefs of privacy.
This project aims to describe and understand individuals’ privacy preferences and attitudes online — what do people prefer in terms of privacy protection and how do they consider trade-offs? How do they reason about privacy? What drives their privacy-related behaviors? And how does the structure of privacy preferences and attitudes differ across individuals within and across countries?