IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/ilewps/83.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Privacy concerns and willingness to adopt AI products: A cross-country randomized survey experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Gutmann, Jerg
  • Brandimarte, Laura
  • Muehlheusser, Gerd
  • Weber, Franziska

Abstract

We examine the trade-off between functionality and data privacy inherent in many AI products by conducting a randomized survey experiment with 1,734 participants from the US and several European countries. Participants' willingness to adopt a hypothetical, AI-enhanced app is measured under three sets of treatments: (i) installation defaults (opt-in vs. opt-out), (ii) salience of data privacy risks, and (iii) regulatory regimes with different levels of data protection. In addition, we study how the willingness to adopt depends on individual attitudes and preferences. We find no effect of defaults or salience, while a regulatory regime with stricter privacy protection increases the likelihood that the app is adopted. Finally, greater data privacy concerns, greater risk aversion, lower levels of trust, and greater skepticism toward AI are associated with a significantly lower willingness to adopt the app.

Suggested Citation

  • Gutmann, Jerg & Brandimarte, Laura & Muehlheusser, Gerd & Weber, Franziska, 2025. "Privacy concerns and willingness to adopt AI products: A cross-country randomized survey experiment," ILE Working Paper Series 83, University of Hamburg, Institute of Law and Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ilewps:83
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/313871/1/ile-wp-2025-83.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Artificial intelligence; privacy concerns; randomized survey experiment; smart products; technology adoption;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • K24 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Cyber Law
    • L86 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software
    • Z10 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:ilewps:83. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/irhamde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.