Survey Response Bias and the ‘Privacy Paradox’

15 June 2020
Sarah Butler, Dr. Garrett Glasgow, and Dr. Samantha Iyengar

Managing Director Sarah Butler and Associate Directors Dr. Garrett Glasgow and Dr. Samantha Iyengar have published “Survey Response Bias and the ‘Privacy Paradox’: Evidence from a Discrete Choice Experiment,” in Applied Economics Letters. The NERA team used a discrete choice survey experiment based on hypothetical ride-hailing services to test for evidence that survey response bias contributes to the privacy paradox. The experiment compared a “within-subjects design” in which location sharing was presented as an attribute of the rides to a “between-subjects design” in which location sharing was not presented as an attribute. In the latter case, the location-sharing practices of the hypothetical firms were presented to a treatment group before the respondents made their choices.

The team’s analysis found that, while respondents placed a value on their personal location data under both survey designs, the differences between the survey designs were statistically insignificant, indicating there is no evidence that the within-subjects design led to the type of survey response bias that might contribute to the privacy paradox.

To read the full article, click here.