The Personalization-Privacy Paradox in the Attention Economy

The personalization-privacy paradox operates as a continuous, tension-charged cycle. Although consumers expect and consider the value of personalization, marketers’ exploitation of consumers’ personal information to provide personalization raises privacy concerns. Consumers, then, form a reluctance to provide personal information for personalization. Some researchers have attempted to enlist IT solutions to address this issue (e.g., anonymizing techniques and peer-to-peer communication), but these solutions proved ineffective as they were too sophisticated for the average consumer. Consequently, the personalization-privacy paradox, which emerged with the advent of mobile technologies, must be more theoretically founded. To date, the information systems literature primarily explicates the issue by applying myriad micro-oriented theories (e.g., privacy calculus theory, game theory, and information boundary theory). The first chapter suggests that the personalization-privacy paradox should also be examined at a macro level—through the lens of the “attention economy.” Investigating the relationship among personalization, privacy, and attention, brings insights regarding the ecology of attention, choice architecture, and stylistic devices and suggests implications for research and practice. The second chapter builds on both social exchange and construal level theories to investigate the extent to which happiness drives the personalization–privacy trade-off decision, as well as the moderating role of experience sharing frequency as a proxy for reciprocity. An online survey administered to a representative sample of French consumers (n = 649) largely confirms the predictions: happiness is the strongest driver of willingness to disclose information in exchange for personalization, surpassing conventional privacy-related constructs (e.g., trust and risk beliefs). Based on social exchange theory and the engagement literature, the third chapter investigates the influence of SNS activity (i.e., collaborative engagement) on users’ willingness to disclose information for personalization (e.g., a form of engagement with SNS platforms). The model is tested using the same dataset as before (n = 649). The results show that happiness with the Internet increases SNS use frequency through SNS literacy, and trust beliefs (information collection concerns) positively (negatively) impact the strength of the indirect relationship between SNS use frequency and willingness to disclose information for personalization via SNS posting frequency. The fourth and last chapter examines the importance of empowering consumers regarding their privacy. While complex, it is necessary to keep on investigating the ambivalent effect of privacy controls because the trade-off between advertising effectiveness and consumer privacy is at the core of the platform economy, which revenues rely on advertising. The author conducted an online survey among French-speaking Facebook users (n = 227). Through a privacy calculus lens, the author adopted a within-subject design to test the effect of education on privacy controls on satisfaction with Facebook ads. The results show that education on privacy controls indirectly affect the satisfaction with Facebook ads via privacy concerns (negative), fairness (positive), and attention quality (positive)