Consumer Behaviour under the General Data Protection Regulation

Abstract

This research paper was conducted in anticipation of the European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulation taking effect on the 25th May 2018. This research is carried out with the intent to discover if the new legislation has a significant impact on consumer rights and consumer behaviour. The study is compelling because it indicates that there is no significant difference in consumption intention after the strengthening of data subject rights. This paper will further prove that consumers do not apply the value they place on their personal data rationally; rather consumers seem to apply such values through peripheral route processing regardless of the importance placed on personal data. The change in consumer rights from the DIR95 to the GDPR increases the scope of potential consumer decisions. As such, it is important for businesses to understand the consumer decision-making process in the service encounter. On the basis of this a WiFi access point was chosen, because the only cost to the consumer is their data, and as with many Internet services it is a low involvement service. An airport company was selected because as a transportation hub with millions of consumers a WiFi service is an important operational tool for data collection. The paper is conceptually significant because it examines persuasive messaging as a result of a regulation, in contrast to other research papers that conventionally examines business proposals rather than regulatory changes. Taking a positivist perspective, the paper adapts the Elaboration Likelihood Model to a legal consequence, deductively examining source credibility, argument quality, and importance controlling for expertise on personal data and the GDPR.