Data sovereignty does matter! Effects on trust, perceived risk, and willingness to share (business) data

The data economy relies on interorganizational data sharing, which has become a key driver of value creation in many industries. In emerging settings such as data marketplaces and ecosystems, businesses can control their shared data, triggering political and academic debates over data sovereignty. Yet, we lack empirical evidence on the extent to which data sovereignty matters for data providers. This study theorizes the impact of data sovereignty on data-sharing antecedents in the societal context of the data economy. We conducted three preliminary studies and two vignette-based online surveys (n1 = 89, n2 = 102) to construct and validate a nomological network of data sovereignty, which we analyzed using structural equation modeling. We find that providers are more willing to share data when they perceive a high degree of sovereignty, as this reduces their perception of risk. Surprisingly, our analysis shows that trust in data consumers does not mediate the link between data sovereignty and willingness to share data. This study is among the first to theorize the concept of data sovereignty in the data economy, thus providing a foundational building block and a justificatory mechanism to inform future theory development. We discuss the relevance of our findings for practitioners and policymakers, highlighting how current efforts to implement data sovereignty mechanisms can yield a range of potentially advantageous outcomes.