Privacy and Rationality

Abstract

We present preliminary evidence from a survey of individual privacy attitudes, privacy behavior, and economic rationality. We discuss the theoretical approach that drives our analysis, the survey design, the empirical hypotheses, and our initial results. In particular, we present evidence of overconfidence in privacy assessments, lack of information prior to privacy-sensitive decisions, misconceptions about one’s own exposure to privacy risks, bounded rationality, and hyperbolic discounting.