Framing Data Choices: How Pre-Donation Exploration Designs Influence Data Donation Behavior and Decision-Making

TL;DR

This study investigates how different pre-donation data exploration designs influence user participation and decision-making in data donation, highlighting the importance of framing in encouraging donation behavior.

Contribution

It introduces and evaluates three data exploration interventions, revealing how framing impacts donation rates and user perceptions in a real-world setting.

Findings

Social comparison framing increased donation participation to 87.5%.

Self-focused view framing resulted in 62.5% participation.

Collective-only framing caused confusion and privacy concerns.

Abstract

Data donation, an emerging user-centric data collection method for public sector research, faces a gap between participant willingness and actual donation. This suggests a design absence in practice: while promoted as "donor-centered" with technical and regulational advances, a design perspective on how data choices are presented and intervene on individual behaviors remain underexplored. In this paper, we focus on pre-donation data exploration, a key stage for adequately and meaningful informed participation. Through a real-world data donation study (N=24), we evaluated three data exploration interventions (self-focused, social comparison, collective-only). Findings show choice framing impacts donation participation. The "social comparison" design (87.5%) outperformed the "self-focused view" (62.5%) while a "collective-only" frame (37.5%) backfired, causing "perspective confusion" and privacy concerns. This study demonstrates how strategic data framing addresses data donation as a behavioral challenge, revealing design's critical yet underexplored role in data donation for participatory public sector innovation.