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A preregistered vignette experiment on determinants of health data sharing behavior

Willingness to donate sensor data, medical records, and biomarkers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2022

Henning Silber*
Affiliation:
GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
Frederic Gerdon
Affiliation:
Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), University of Mannheim, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Ruben Bach
Affiliation:
University of Mannheim
Christoph Kern
Affiliation:
University of Mannheim
Florian Keusch
Affiliation:
University of Mannheim
Frauke Kreuter
Affiliation:
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, University of Maryland
*
Correspondence: Henning Silber, GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, B6 4–5, 68159 Mannheim, Germany. Email: henning.silber@gesis.org

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has spotlighted the importance of high-quality data for empirical health research and evidence-based political decision-making. To leverage the full potential of these data, a better understanding of the determinants and conditions under which people are willing to share their health data is critical. Building on the privacy theory of contextual integrity, the privacy calculus, and previous findings regarding different data types and recipients, we argue that established social norms shape the acceptance of novel practices of data collection and use. To investigate the willingness to share health data, we conducted a preregistered vignette experiment. The scenarios experimentally varied the vignette dimensions by data type, recipient, and research purpose. While some findings contradict our hypotheses, the results indicate that all three dimensions affected respondents’ data sharing decisions. Additional analyses suggest that institutional and social trust, privacy concerns, technical affinity, altruism, age, and device ownership influence the willingness to share health data.

Information

Type
Life Science in Politics: Methodological Innovations and Political Issues
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences
Figure 0

Table 1. Dimensions and levels of the vignettes.

Figure 1

Table 2. Mean levels of willingness to share health data and 95% confidence intervals for 18 vignettes.

Figure 2

Figure 1. Results of the multilevel regression analyses predicting willingness to share health data: Main effects and interaction effects between the experimental dimensions. Model 1a displays results of the main effects of the vignette dimensions. Model 1b displays the main effects and the interaction between data recipient and purpose. Model 1c displays the main effects and the interaction between data type and recipient. The dots show the respective point estimates, and the bars indicate the 95% confidence intervals.

Figure 3

Figure 2. Results of the multilevel regression analyses predicting willingness to share health data: Additional measures and interaction effects. All models (2a–3c) include main effects of the vignette dimensions (not shown). Models 2a–3a display the results for various trust measures. Model 3b displays the results of altruism and Model 3c for public duty. The dots show the respective point estimates, and the bars indicate the 95% confidence intervals.

Figure 4

Figure 3. Results of the multilevel regression analyses predicting willingness to share health data: Exploratory analyses. All models (4a–4d) include main effects of the vignette dimensions (not shown). Model 4a displays the results for the demographic variables. Model 4b displays the results of device ownership and technical affinity. Model 4c displays the effects for political ideology and social trust. Model 4d displays the results for cancer exposure and privacy concerns. The dots show the respective point estimates, and the bars indicate the 95% confidence intervals.

Supplementary material: PDF

Silber et al. supplementary material

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