Data Donations: Data Disclosure for the Common Good

Abstract Similar to financial donations, which have developed into a multi-billion-dollar sector, data donations have the potential to advance public interest goals and promote the common good by enabling access to rich, individual-level behavioral data. However, the concept of data donation remains theoretically underdeveloped, and its practical implementation is still in its early stages. The paper proposes a definition of data donation that integrates different disciplinary perspectives and outlines the concept’s key characteristics. Furthermore, the paper outlines major challenges that currently prevent data donations from realizing their full potential. Specifically, it discusses issues related to public awareness, motivation to donate, ensuring continuity of data donations, privacy concerns, informed consent, data access and data quality. These are all challenges which call for further research to better understand the theoretical foundations of data donations and to explore how their potential can be effectively unlocked in practice. The paper argues that Information Systems scholars are well-positioned to address these questions, contribute to an improved theoretical underpinning of data donations, and promote their effective implementation in practice.