Prospective Consent: The Effect of Framing on Cookie Consent Decisions

Abstract

Prospect theory is a behavioral model of how people make decisions in the presence of risk; this work explores the application of prospect theory, particularly the reference-dependence effect, to user interactions with cookie banners. We identify two possible risks associated with cookies-the functional risk that denying cookies will degrade user experience and the privacy risk that accepting cookies will allow a website to access and sell personal information-and explore how the slant of a cookie consent banner (which risk it emphasizes) and the framing of a banner (whether it emphasizes the potential for gain or the potential for loss) impact user decisions. We conduct an empirical users study (n = 1557) in which we observe how users interact with different cookie banner prompts. We find that for both possible slants, a negative framing is significantly more effective at nudging user decisions. We also find that the combination of slant and framing impact cookie opt-out rates by a factor of three. These results demonstrate the need for further consideration of the ethical implications of framing and nudging in the context of consent requests.