The value of data privacy during the COVID-19 pandemic: a new set of survey questions

Abstract

Contact-tracing smartphone apps that rely on users’ private data have been proposed as important tools in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. The use of these apps, however, has sparked new debates on the value of data privacy. Several earlier studies have investigated citizens’ willingness to use such apps. We propose a set of questions as a new measurement instrument that goes beyond eliciting acceptance and aims at quantifying users’ willingness to pay (WTP) for data privacy. We assess some aspects of the measurement instrument pertaining to its validity. We find central assumptions of our theoretical model met, suggesting that the instrument serves as a good starting point for measuring WTP. For example, we found a rather low WTP for data privacy in times of a pandemic, with high consent rates to data sharing and a majority of people who would pay amounts of up to 10€ only to not have to share data. Nevertheless, there are several improvements to the instrument possible that should be addressed by future research. We also encourage researchers to field the refined version in larger samples including the offline population.