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.