Germans place the highest value on privacy compared to the U.S. and Latin American countries. Across countries, people place the highest value on keeping financial and biometric information private —balance and fingerprint data in particular.
Germany’s status as the country with highest value for privacy is driven
largely by extremely strong preferences for keeping financial data private. German respondents were willing to share bank balance information in exchange for monthly payments of $15.43 and cash withdrawal information for $13.42/month.
People are much less concerned about ads than any of the other types of data we explored.
Indeed, in Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico, the average respondent was willing to pay small amounts to receive ads, suggesting that people in those countries like receiving ads. Location privacy also turned out to be among the least valuable to people in every country.
The authors also found that women value privacy more than men do across platforms, data types, and countries and older people value privacy more than younger people. There are no real differences across income in privacy preferences.
The information included personal information on finances, biometrics, location, networks, communications, and webbrowsing. The countries analyzed included the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, and Germany.
Compiled by SCM from Jeffrey Prince and Scott Wallsten (January 2020). How Much is Privacy Worth Around the World and Across Platforms? Technology Policy Institute, https://techpolicyinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Prince_Wallsten_How-Much-is-Privacy-Worth-Around-the-World-and-Across-Platforms.pdf
