The Value of Location Information

The value attached to privacy has become a common notion in the press, featuring frequent stories of people selling sensitive personal information for a couple of dollars. Syverson argues [1] that we should incorporate the risk of data misuse into our reasoning about privacy valuations. Yet there are doubts as to whether people can, and do, value their privacy correctly and appropriately. Privacy is a complex notion and as such it is very difficult to valuate it taking into account its full complexity. In this experiment we consider one aspect of privacy, namely location privacy, that can be compromised through mobile phone network data. We performed a European-wide study to assess the value that people attach to their location privacy using tools from experimental psychology and economics. We present the first results here.