Welfare assessment of the GDPR using discrete choice experiment

The paper ana­ly­ses pre­fe­ren­ces towards new onli­ne mecha­ni­sms for pro­tec­tion of per­so­nal data man­da­ted by the EU Gene­ral Data Pro­tec­tion Regu­la­tion (GDPR). Authors esti­ma­te mone­ta­ry valu­ation of the core instru­ments envi­sa­ged by the reform and assess poten­tial welfa­re gains. On metho­do­lo­gi­cal gro­unds, they apply sta­ted pre­fe­ren­ce discre­te cho­ice expe­ri­ment. With this appro­ach, they pro­vi­de ex ante insi­ghts into users’ pre­fe­ren­ces towards par­ti­cu­lar pri­va­cy con­trol mecha­ni­sms, such as right to be for­got­ten, right to object pro­fi­ling and per­so­nal data por­ta­bi­li­ty. The­irs stu­dy is based on onli­ne survey of 143 Polish uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents con­duc­ted befo­re the GDPR imple­men­ta­tion. They use the­se data to esti­ma­te mixed logit model. The main fin­ding from the ana­ly­sis is that intro­duc­tion of the GDPR incre­ases con­su­mer sur­plus by impro­ving con­trol over sha­ring of per-sonal data. The esti­ma­ted value of median con­su­mer sur­plus per capi­ta amo­unts to 6.5 EUR per month. In the first pla­ce, users appre­cia­te the right to be for­got­ten, exten­ded infor­ma­tion obli­ga­tions and objec­tion to pro­fi­ling. Sur­pri­sin­gly, the role of per­so­nal data por­ta­bi­li­ty is shar­ply unde­re­sti­ma­ted. Pre­fe­ren­ce for the right to be for­got­ten is higher among more pri­va­cy con­cer­ned indi-vidu­als and lower for tho­se respon­dents who acti­ve­ly use lar­ger num­ber of onli­ne servi­ces. Inten-sive onli­ne acti­vi­ty incre­ases demand for infor­ma­ti­ve and user-frien­dly pri­va­cy policies.