Value creation in the user-centric personal information ecosystem

The emerging user-centric personal information ecosystem within the data-driven economy offers new opportunities and poses new challenges to organizations that base their business on the collection and use of personal information. In the user-centric ecosystem, the control over personal information is given back to the individuals who, as the information owners, can decide whether, under what conditions and in change for what to disclose their data to trusted counterparts. In this new scenario, organizations should revise their relationship with individuals to make them willing to disclose the information they need. Based on evidences from the economics and psychology of privacy literature, the paper argues that this could be done by involving individuals as coproducers in the value-generating processes that use personal information. Under this strategy, besides economic compensation and personalized services, organizations can leverage the ‘psychological’ benefits deriving from the coproduction experience as further incentives that can enhance the individuals’ willingness to disclose their personal information.