Behavioral Experiments in Data Privacy

With the penetration of technology into new markets, there are a number of questions around data privacy that have been insufficiently studied. Moreover, many of the core issues in data privacy are behavioral in nature, such as the intention-action gap and hyperbolic discounting manifested by consumers. We will study two key aspects of data privacy behaviors: 1) How to make consumers more privacy-conscious through different dissemination techniques of privacy policy agreements and streamlining the consent process to make it more effective and 2) Privacy as a business advantage for industry through exploration of privacy disclosure, control over data, and ways of sharing data. This study incorporates an experimental approach. We test people’s revealed preferences for sharing data through lab games programmed on computers and understand their stated preferences through vignettes and survey questions. Our results will be used to demonstrate methods that make users engage more with consent and privacy policies and allow businesses to benefit from more aware consumers and improved data sharing practices.