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Companies are struggling to understand how to give consumers a way to manage their data. Recent legislative actions provide incomplete guidance on this issue as different countries have adopted different practices (e.g., GDPR recommends firms explicitly give consumers the right to deletion, while most US firms require consumers to actively seek this option out). Thus, in this research, we explore the impact of three different data request frames (provide vs. keep vs. delete) on consumers’ willingness to share information and how such frames interact with sensitivity of information type and type of recipient (e.g., close friend, trusted marketer, unknown marketer). Our findings show that, as expected, consumers share the least information in the keep frame and that this framing effect occurs for low and medium sensitive information, but not information high in sensitivity. Building on reactance theory and cognitive evaluation theory, we propose that different frames lead to different levels of autonomy causing a threat to consumers’ freedom leading to different willingness to share information. An additional study is planned to test this underlying mechanism.
