Do they really care about targeted political ads? Investigation of user privacy concerns and preferences

Research output: Contributions to collected editions/worksArticle in conference proceedingsResearchpeer-review

Authors

Reliance on targeted political ads has skyrocketed in recent years, leading to negative reactions in media and society. Nonetheless, only few studies investigate user privacy concerns and their role in user acceptance decisions in the context of online political targeting. To fill this gap, in this study we explore the magnitude of privacy concerns towards targeted political ads compared to “traditional” targeting in the product context. Surprisingly, we find no notable differences in privacy concerns between these use purposes. In the next step, user preferences over ad types are elicited with the help of a discrete choice experiment in the mobile app adoption context. Among others, our findings from simulations on the basis of a mixed logit model cautiously suggest that while targeted political advertising is perceived as somewhat less desirable by respondents, its presence does not consequentially deter users from choosing such an app, with user preferences being highly volatile. Together, these results contribute to a better understanding of users' privacy concerns and preferences in the context of targeted political advertising online.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationECIS 2019 proceedings : information systems for a sharing society ; proceedings of the 27th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), June 8-14, 2019, Stockholm & Uppsala, Sweden
EditorsJan vom Brocke, Shirley Gregor, Oliver Muller
Place of PublicationAtlanta
PublisherAssociation for Information Systems
Publication date2020
Article number77
ISBN (electronic)978-1-7336325-0-8
Publication statusPublished - 2020
Externally publishedYes
Event27th European Conference on Information Systems: Information Systems for a Sharing Society - ECIS 2019 - Stockholm and Uppsala, Sweden
Duration: 08.06.201914.06.2019
Conference number: 27
http://ecis2019.eu/

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 27th European Conference on Information Systems - Information Systems for a Sharing Society, ECIS 2019. All rights reserved.