I recently signed up for 23andme, a genetic testing and DNA ancestry service. Once I set up my account, an intriguing request popped up: Would I like to contribute my genetic information and supplemental survey data to a study called 23andwe? The information would be used for genetics studies, presumably benefitting human health and wellness in general.
In our research on the value of personal data, we found that the average price US consumers would pay to keep their health related information private was $38 per year. However, placing a monetary value on the exchange of personal information may be too limiting — there may be other reasons for giving up personal information that go beyond money.
We tested this idea by giving people two non-monetary “prices” or rewards for their data. In our experiment we offered people various amounts of money in exchange for various types of personal data. Aside from money, we also offered these two rewards or motivations:
– Sharing information makes the service better for you and everyone else, as it allows the service provider to improve their products using that information
– Sharing information makes the service and the wider world better for everyone because analyzing the information leads to new discoveries
The first is not entirely altruistic, in that it benefits the person contributing their information as well as the wider product user community. A simple example of this is a website asking you to take a survey to help them make the product better. More sophisticated examples are Netflix with its rating and recommendation algorithms or Glassdoor.com with its salary information. The second reward listed above is more altruistic – even if donating the information has no personal benefit, it benefits humanity as a whole.
So how widespread is the altruism instinct? It of course varies by the type of information we are being asked to give up, but in our experiment, up to 20% of respondents consistently claimed to be willing to exchange some type of personal data for a better product, or a better world. In the case of “health history,” 12% were willing to share their information, which bodes well for the likes of 23andme.
Perhaps more interesting was the difference between sharing to make the product better for you and everyone, and sharing to make the world better. In cases where we presented these two options alongside monetary rewards, 3% opted to forgo money in order to make the product better, but more than 6% opted to forgo money to make the world a better place. So 23andme have got it right – there are cases where appealing to users’ altruism will be more motivating than appealing to their self-interest.
Finally we sanity checked what consumers told us they would do with what they have done in the past. The health data matched our consumer intentions rather well – with 14% claiming to have shared some aspect of their health history in the past 2-3 years.
What do you think? Would you be willing to give up your own health data for the good of the world? If so, whom would you trust with it?
Photo by flickr user Victor Pillac, showing a Cairn