# Money Walks: A Human-Centric Study on the Economics of Personal Mobile Data

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1407.0566 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1407.0566/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 2 Jul 2014.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [GenSim: A General Social Simulation Platform with Large Language Model based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04360/) (2024)
- [A Survey of Data Pricing for Data Marketplaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04810/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In the context of a myriad of mobile apps which collect personally identifiable information (PII) and a prospective market place of personal data, we investigate a user-centric monetary valuation of mobile PII. During a 6-week long user study in a living lab deployment with 60 participants, we collected their daily valuations of 4 categories of mobile PII (communication, e.g. phonecalls made/received, applications, e.g. time spent on different apps, location and media, photos taken) at three levels of complexity (individual data points, aggregated statistics and processed, i.e. meaningful interpretations of the data). In order to obtain honest valuations, we employ a reverse second price auction mechanism. Our findings show that the most sensitive and valued category of personal information is location. We report statistically significant associations between actual mobile usage, personal dispositions, and bidding behavior. Finally, we outline key implications for the design of mobile services and future markets of personal data.