A Prototype Decision Support System for Privacy-Service Trading

Today, personal information is treated as a type of commodity that can be bought or sold. Service providers typically present incentives to consumers to encourage them to disclose their personal information. However, this trading is not done efficiently, because service providers do not know how consumers evaluate the importance of each of their personal attributes. In this study, a prototype decision support system was developed to enable service providers to quantify relative information importance. The information was visualized using graphs constructed from the survey results. The graph was customized for each service provider to match his or her interest. The survey results indicated that most of service providers were satisfied with this decision support system. Many changed their perspective on personal attributes acquisition after using the system.