Citizens' agreement to share personal data for public policies: trust and issue importance

The digitalisation of public policy requires that the State uses citizens' personal data. Although researchers agree that data privacy is important, we know little about the conditions under which citizens approve of their personal data being used in different policy domains. This study relies...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of European public policy Vol. 31; no. 9; pp. 2483 - 2508
Main Authors Trein, Philipp, Varone, Frédéric
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Routledge 01.09.2024
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Agreements
Citizens
Crime
Crime prevention
Data
health
Health research
Personal information
policy-making
Privacy
Public officials
Public policy
security
Tax evasion
taxes
Terrorism
welfare
Welfare benefits
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Summary:The digitalisation of public policy requires that the State uses citizens' personal data. Although researchers agree that data privacy is important, we know little about the conditions under which citizens approve of their personal data being used in different policy domains. This study relies on data from original surveys conducted in Switzerland to demonstrate that citizens' willingness to share their data with the State is low and varies across policy domains. Support for sharing is significantly higher when the data are used to prevent benefit fraud in social assistance or to improve health research than when they are used to fight tax evasion or to prevent crime and terrorism. Nevertheless, we also argue that the more citizens trust government and the more important they consider a policy issue to be, the more likely they are to share their data with the State officials in charge of the relevant policy. Previous use of apps also increases citizens' agreement for the policy-related use of their personal data.
ISSN:1350-1763
1466-4429
DOI:10.1080/13501763.2023.2205434