What’s the purpose? Understanding Differences in Consumer Data Sharing for Commercial vs. Social Goals

Abstract

A key factor in data protection is the specific purpose for which the data is used, as legal frameworks often provide varying levels of protection depending on the intended use. At the same time, firms are increasingly pursuing multiple objectives, balancing traditional profit-driven goals with social ones. In collaboration with a Dutch start-up in the sports and healthcare sector, we conducted an online experiment to examine consumers' willingness to share personal data for different purposes. Participants were asked to share their data for either a commercial purpose, a social purpose, or both. We also elicited perceptions of the purpose, data, and firm. Our findings suggest that the purpose for which data is requested has a nuanced impact on consumers' willingness to share personal information. When consumers are not aware of another purpose, purpose has no effect on willingness to share, while if the other purpose is known, consumers are more readily willing to share their data for the social than the commercial purpose. Results from a follow-up study suggest that this may be due to the commercial purpose being systematically misperceived in our setting when not made salient through contrasting. Studying spillovers between purposes, we find that pursuing a social purpose alongside a commercial one appears to undermine the firm's core commercial objective, while adding a commercial purpose to a social one neither hinders nor enhances individuals’ willingness to share data for the social purpose. Joint paper with Emiel Maasland, Elric Tendron and Franziska Weber.