Privacy-sensitive Business Models: Barriers of Organizational Adoption of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies

Organizations pursuing data-driven business models (DDBM) rely on processing user data to improve and provide their services. However, collecting personal information is often criticized by consumers due to concerns about the potential misuse of such data. While these two interests stand in an unsolved conflict - and organizations need to balance these interests - advances in the field of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) promise a resolution to achieve both goals simultaneously. Yet, organizations barely use PETs within their DDBMs. Based on the TOE framework, we review the literature on barriers of PET adoption to shed light on the unsolved question why organizations resist adopting PETs. We reflect the state of research on the trade-off between creating value using data and information privacy. We particularly find that multiple research streams call for the organizational adoption of PETs. Nevertheless, the main barriers we identified are unclear economic impact as well as the lack of relative advantage of PET