The Average Consumer Thinks Data Privacy Is Worth Around 65 Cents

chicksdaddy writes "Threatpost is reporting today on the findings of an ENISA study that looked at whether consumers would pay more for goods in exchange for more privacy. The answer — 'Sure...just not much more.' The report (PDF): 'Study on Monetizing Privacy: An Economic Model for Pricing Personal Information' presents the findings of a laboratory study in which consumers were asked to buy identical goods from two online vendors: one that collected minimal customer information and another that required the customer to surrender more of their personal information to purchase the item, including phone number and a government ID number. The laboratory experiment showed that the majority of consumers value privacy protections. When the prices of the goods offered by both the privacy protecting and the privacy violating online retailers were equal, shoppers much preferred the privacy protecting vendor. But the preference for more privacy wasn't very strong, and didn't come close to equaling consumers' preference for lower prices. In fact, consumers readily switched to a more privacy-invasive provider if that provider charged a lower price for the same goods. How much lower? Not much, researchers discovered. A discount of just E0.50 ($0.65) was enough to sway consumers away from a vendor who would protect the privacy of their personal data."

Re:Privacy or Convenience?

[TheRaven64]

TFA started responding to me, and some salient facts appeared. First, the difference between the privacy and non-privacy options were supplying an email address and mobile phone number (no word on whether either had to be valid) and permission to spam the email address. Second, the items in question were cinema tickets, which means that this discount is 5-10%. I'd probably take that - it takes a few seconds to set up a new mail alias that I can delete if it starts to get too spammy.

Re:$.065...sigh

[TC Wilcox]

This report was brought to you by Verizon.

I wanted to mod you up, but you didn't have a link for those that missed the whole funny affair.... http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]

Re:Third Option

[retroworks]

FTA "Note: In order to protect their personal data, some individuals who are concerned with their privacy strategically invalidate their personal identifies by disclosing bogus information. They have an incentive do do so given that the detection probability is low and the consequences of such information disclosure are not negative"...."Information disclosed by participants is not checked for accuracy. In particular, where individuals are asked for sensitive perrsonal data that cannot be verified, results could be biased".

In the accompanying footnote, "In Germany, almost every fourth internet user stated that h/she has given false information on the internet in the past".