Unfair Value Allocation: The Role of Data Ownership in Private Information Disclosure

Consumer privacy is an issue of increasing public concern. Prior research has tended to view consumer privacy in terms of personal data exposure (and the potential harms thereof, such as identity theft or embarrassment). However, the present research proposes that consumers’ concerns over disclosing their private information reflect not only data exposure concerns, but also concerns over data ownership (i.e., the ownership of the value created from their private information). We find convergent support across eight preregistered experiments that consumers express greater concerns over disclosure of their information when they perceive that they are not receiving the fair value of their private information in exchange. This research contributes to the privacy literature by identifying a relatively understudied aspect of consumer privacy concerns, offers practical implications for firms on managing users’ data, and calls attention to users’ data ownership from the legal perspective.