The Impact of Sector Difference on People’s Data Sharing Intention: an Experimental Study

Although data sharing plays a critical role in the development of data economy and improvement of government service (Wang 2018), there have been legitimate obstacles for data sharing in terms of privacy concern and regulation (Lowman 2017). Previous work has demonstrated the impact of money incentives on data sharing behavior (Beresford, etc. 2012; Acquisti, etc. 2013; Benndorf and Normann 2018). In this research, we aim to examine the effect of sector difference on data sharing behavior, namely, do the public hold different attitudes about sharing data with public organizations versus private organizations? The effects of sector difference are of high interest to Public Administration researchers. For instance, researchers have investigated that if people’s perceptions of organization performance differ between public and private organizations (Hvidman and Andersen 2016; Meier, Johnson, and An 2019). In this research, we further set out to examine whether people have different willingness to share data with public organizations or private organizations in the social context of China. We conducted a pilot survey experiment that uses a 2 * 2 between-subject design. Participants are introduced a new Motorbike sharing APP and are asked to indicate their willingness to use the APP. The APP either shares data with a government agency or a private company. The price for using this APP is controlled in high (3 RMB/min) and low (1 RMB/min) two conditions. Overall, we have four conditions (see Table 1). The results showed that people are more willing to share their data with government than with private company. When the price of app usage is high, the difference between willingness of sharing data with public and private sector is lessened. It suggests that price plays a more significant role in influencing people’s data sharing behavior.