Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Statistics

The paper Privacy attitudes toward mouse-tracking paradata collection by Henninger, F., Kieslich, P.J., Fernandez-Fontelo, A., Greven, S. and Kreuter F. will appear in Public Opinion Quarterly.

Survey participants' mouse movements provide a rich, unobtrusive source of paradata, and offer insight into the response process beyond the observed answers. However, the use of mouse-tracking may require participants' explicit consent that their movements are recorded and analyzed. Thus, the fundamental question arises how this affects the willingness of participants to take part in a survey at all -- if prospective respondents are reluctant to complete the survey if additional measures are collected, paradata collection may do more harm than good. Previous research has found that other paradata collection modes reduce the willingness to participate, and that this decrease may be influenced by the specific motivation provided to participants for collecting the data. However, the effects of mouse movement collection on survey consent and participation have not been addressed so far. In a vignette experiment, we show that willingness to participate in a survey decreased when mouse-tracking was part of the overall consent. However, a larger proportion of the sample was willing to both take part and provide mouse-tracking data when these decisions were combined, compared to an independent opt-in to paradata collection, separated from the decision to complete the study. This indicates that survey practitioners may face a trade-off between maximizing their overall participation rate and maximizing the number of participants that also provide mouse-tracking data. Explaining motivations for paradata collection did not have a positive effect and, in some cases, even reduced participants' willingness to participate.