Privacy tradeoffs in smartphone applications

- Choice experiments are used to examine privacy tradeoffs in smartphone applications.
- Plausible WTP amounts to conceal information are estimated.
- Valuations differ for different demographic groups.

We use choice experiments to examine privacy tradeoffs in smartphone applications (“apps”). Results show that the representative consumer is willing to make a one-time payment for each app of about $2.28 to conceal their browser history, $4.05 to conceal their contacts, $1.19 to conceal their location, $1.75 to conceal their phone's identification number, and $3.58 to conceal their texts. These valuations vary for different segments of society.