Consumer Groups and their Risk Perception in a Data Sharing Cooperation between Two Firms

Privacy research has paid little attention to consequences and peculiarities when firms share consumer data with a third party. Thus, we explore consumers' distinct standpoints regarding an impact on their perceived privacy risks due to a data sharing cooperation between two firms. We identify three consumer groups, whereby two of them see their privacy risks affected (either increased or decreased) and the third consumer group sees their privacy risks not affected due to a data sharing cooperation between two firms. We show that this special third group does not intensively deal with privacy related issues in this situation, which results in lower perceived privacy risks and a higher willingness to disclose personal data compared to the two other consumer groups. We show that this group effect on willingness to disclose even holds when controlling for effects of consumers' privacy concerns and their perceived benefits. Furthermore, this effect is fully mediated by consumers' perceived privacy risks. Our study provides first insights into different consumer groups and its characteristics in a data disclosure setting in which firms have a data sharing cooperation. Therefore, this work allows future research to apply a refined view on consumers, especially in such complex data disclosure settings.