An empirical analysis of the impacts of different styles of displaying privacy information on app users’ comprehension and willingness to use

Abstract

To explore the possibilities of public policies that balance comprehension of the privacy policy and willingness to use an app, we measured the treatment effects of displaying a summary of a privacy policy by a layered structure in different manners to vary the user’s load to browse the summary. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) was applied to 2060 Japanese online consumers with four treatment groups. The heterogeneity of the treatment effects was also measured by the time of using PC, trust in data protection rules, and the age groups. Users’ comprehension increased on average when treated with certain browsing loads. The user group with higher trust in the rules showed a higher increase. Users consuming longer time to use a PC tended to have lower comprehension levels compared to others after the treatment of a light browsing load, but those heavy PC users significantly increased their willingness to use when treated with heavier browsing loads. It was possible to improve comprehension without losing willingness to use.