Personal Data Usage and Consumer Behavior in Digital Domains

The use of the internet has seen significant growth in recent years, across devices and national borders. Consumers use the internet for a variety of reasons, such as purchasing products or services, searching for information, consuming digital news and entertainment content, or communicating with friends and family .

These interactions both require and create digital data that has become easier to collect, cheaper to store and more profitable to use. As such, personal data has become a source of competitive advantage for firms, enabling novel business models and improving existing business profits. While these data-driven business models create substantial value for both firms and consumers, they also raise important questions regarding privacy, transparency, and consumer acceptance. Consequently, research in business administration, information systems, and marketing has devoted considerable attention to understanding consumers' willingness to disclose personal information and their responses to data-driven business practices.

This cumulative dissertation investigates how the disclosure and transparent use of personal data affects consumer behavior in digital domains. Across three closely connected essays, this dissertation combines a systematic literature review, controlled laboratory experiments, a field experiment, and a quasi-experimental analysis of secondary data to provide researchers and practitioners alike with insights into consumers' behavior regarding overt data requests and covert data collection. Consumers understand that their personal data holds value and consistently evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of either proactively disclosing data or having their personal data used by firms.