Willingness to sell social media data. A laboratory experiment

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate into people’s willingness to sell their social media data and into personal characteristics associated with the willingness to sell. The study was conducted as an experiment in the laboratory and is the first one to analyze people’s willingness to sell their entire Facebook data package. A sample of 174 student participants downloaded their Facebook data. The participants were invited to sell their data package to the research team in exchange for 10 Swiss Francs (approx. 10 US Dollars) in the form of a take-it-or-leave-it offer. 66% of the study participants sold their social media data. We show that people’s willingness to sell their social media data for small rewards is generally high, yet lower for those people holding high levels of privacy concern.