Transparency, Awareness, and Privacy Cynicism Exploring Appropriate Dataveillance for Personalized Advertising Through Qualitative Interviews

In an effort to sell, advertisers track our needs, preferences, and online behaviors. The continuous collection of big volumes of data results in the so-called dataveillance. Guided by the transparency-awareness-control framework and privacy management theory, the current study aims to provide insights into consumers’ thought processes as they determine if, when, and what types of dataveillance are appropriate. We analyzed 22 in-depth interviews and explored consumer perceptions of appropriate dataveillance in the context of advertising. Our findings show that interviewees held pre-existing expectations of dataveillance that helped determine whether specific circumstances were appropriate. Interviewees desired awareness of and control over dataveillance for advertising purposes, and these two factors often intertwined with their expectations. Additionally, interviewees expressed privacy cynicism, or a feeling that they lacked control over the collection and use of their personal information. Consumer perceptions of appropriate dataveillance in advertising provides important implications to advertisers on how to navigate data collection and usage for advertising to prevent backlash.