The value of personal information online: Results from three stated preference discrete choice experiments in the UK

This paper proposes the application of a widely used approach, known as stated preference discrete choice experiments, to estimate the value of personal information in three real-life contexts and situations. The paper develops three experiments describing hypothetical situations in which respondents considered varying aspects of their personal information (e.g. storage, sharing with third parties) when (a) purchasing online a product, (b) a service or (c) conducting pure search online. The survey was carried out with sample quotas pre-specified in order to match the profile of the Internetuser population in the UK with respect to gender, age group, geographical area of residence and personal annual income. The results from the experiment provide new insights in the value and influence of attributes of personal information when conducting online transactions. In particular, main results show that there was little interest by respondents to pay in order to introduce control over their personal data, that the extend of sharing of personal information with third parties was seen the most important aspect when choosing online retailers and search engines, and that an unspecified duration of data storage was received as badly as the data storage beyond several years for online retailers and worse than shorter durations