ABSTRACT

Using data donations to collect digital trace data holds great potential for communication research, which has not yet been fully realized. Besides limited awareness and expertise among researchers, a central challenge is to motivate people to donate their personal data. Therefore, this article investigates which factors affect people’s willingness to donate across different platforms and data types. The study applies a multilevel approach that explains the reported willingness to donate different types of data (level 1) belonging to different platforms (level 2) from potential data donors with individual characteristics (level 3) to a hypothetical research project. The analysis is based on data collected through a national online survey (n = 833). We find higher willingness to donate YouTube data compared to Facebook, Instagram, or Google, as well as relevant influencing factors at all three levels. Greater willingness is found for lower perceived sensitivity and higher perceived relevance of the data (level of data type), greater perceived behavioral control to request and submit the data (platform level), more favorable attitudes toward data donation and the donation purpose, as well as lower contextual privacy concerns (individual level). Based on these findings, practical implications for future data donation studies are proposed.

摘要

使用数据捐赠来收集数字跟踪数据对于传播研究具有巨大的潜力，但尚未完全实现。除了研究人员的意识和专业知识有限之外，一个主要挑战是激励人们捐赠个人数据。因此，本文研究了哪些因素影响人们跨不同平台和数据类型的捐赠意愿。该研究采用多层次方法，解释了具有个人特征的潜在数据捐赠者（第 3 级）向假设研究项目捐赠属于不同平台（第 2 级）的不同类型数据（第 1 级）的意愿。该分析基于通过全国在线调查收集的数据（n = 833）。我们发现与 Facebook、Instagram 或 Google 相比，捐赠 YouTube 数据的意愿更高，以及所有三个层面的相关影响因素。人们对数据的较低感知敏感性和较高感知相关性（数据类型级别）的意愿更强，对请求和提交数据的感知行为控制能力更强（平台级别），对数据捐赠和捐赠目的更有利的态度作为较低的上下文隐私问题（个人级别）。基于这些发现，提出了对未来数据捐赠研究的实际影响。