Tracking technologies in eHealth: Revisiting the personalization-privacy paradox through the transparency-control framework

Abstract

Our research highlights the evolving landscape of online privacy, emphasizing the growing compliance pressure on tech companies and website owners due to GDPR regulations, particularly concerning cookie banners. The regulation of these banners for personalization underscores the trade-off known as the personalization-privacy paradox. Although recent studies emphasize the positive role of transparency and control in enhancing the digital experience, they often approached them in a static and isolated manner. We introduce a new approach to operationalizing transparency and control in our study within the context of Doctissimo, a well-known French health and wellness website recognized for aggregating user-generated health data and employing advertising trackers for marketing objectives. In Study 1, we examined banner transparency, demonstrating its positive effect on click-through intention via a preference for personalization over privacy. Study 2 focused on banner privacy controls and revealed that the impact of control was entirely mediated by the intrusion of information boundaries and the preference for personalization over privacy. This research contributes to the literature by investigating the personalization privacy paradox using an innovative operationalization within the transparency-control framework.