Consumers’ personal information provides valuable insight for marketers, but consumers are increasingly wary of companies’ data collection practices. Increasing regulations and consumer concerns about privacy have made it crucial to understand the factors that drive consumers to voluntarily share their personal information with companies. Complementing extant research that focuses on contextual and emotional drivers of self-disclosure, the current study explores how the decision to share personal information with companies can be ideologically determined. We identify political ideology (liberal vs. conservative) as a novel driver of consumers’ decision to share personal information. We show that conservatives (vs. liberals) are more likely to share personal information with companies, because they are more likely to view companies’ requests for personal information as legitimate and fair. Seven studies (N = 2,790) provide evidence of this phenomenon and the psychological process behind it. The studies also show that this effect is attenuated when: (1) the privacy risk is explicitly salient, (2) the rationale for information sharing does not stem from companies’ profit maximizing goal, and (3) the requester is a non-profit organization.

ljudy@ceibs.edu