The Willingness to Risk Others’ Privacy for Monetary and Time Rewards : An Experimental Study

When people transfer their own data, it may also contain others’ data. In this case, people decide whether to risk others’ privacy on behalf of others. In addition, the benefit of transferring personal data could be in form of money or time. Will people exhibit different willingness to expose one’ s own or others’ personal data, and what is the stated price measured by monetary or time units? We elicit people’s willingness to accept to put one’ s own or unknown others’ privacy at risk in controlled experiments. The requested monetary compensation and time compensation for giving up privacy are compared. The results reveal that participants state higher prices when they make decisions on behalf of others than when they do this for themselves, and this discrepancy is robust no matter the payment is monetary or time reward. It is evident that people care about others’ privacy more than their own and show higher valuation of personal data when the benefit of the exchange is time rather than money