The effect of a blockchain-supported, privacy-preserving system on disclosure of personal data

Abstract

In light of digitalization, customers increasingly share private data through their online behaviors and actions. Yet, customers have become reluctant to share data due to privacy concerns. From a psychological perspective, a reduction of users' perceived risks should result in a higher willingness to share sensitive data. The development of blockchain-supported, multi-part computation thereby represents an interesting novel empirical context to study such willingness to disclose personal data, as such technologies involve a privacy-preserving approach that could not only technically solve privacy issues but also ought to address precisely the user's risk perception. Therefore, we conducted an online experiment with 420 participants to examine the willingness to disclose personal data dependent on different privacy protection mechanisms. A deception based experiment allowed to measure not only user intention, but also real user behavior. Surprisingly, our results demonstrate that participants shared similar amounts of personal data for blockchain-supported approaches and standard privacy policies. Even though an aversion to the blockchain system due to its novelty and potentially perceived complexity was not detected. Furthermore, we found that the willingness to share data increased significantly specifically for technically affine people when they were presented with the opportunity to monetize their data. We further discuss the effects of privacy awareness and whether prior knowledge of blockchain technology had a supporting effect for user acceptance.