The Willingness to Sell Personal Data

Abstract

We assess the willingness of individuals to sell personal data in laboratory experiments. Our experiments are novel in that they are incentivized, the focus on privacy issues is salient, and the use of the data is transparent and unambiguous. We find considerable heterogeneity in the data. Roughly one in six participants refuse to sell personal data at all and a similar fraction sell their data for 2.50 euros or less. Our results contrast with those from hypothetical questionnaires. Those willing to sell, request, on average, 15 euros for their contact details and 19 euros for their Facebook data.