“My data or yours?” Unraveling Privacy Among Consumers of Digital Credit in India

2022-2024

PIs: Janaki Srinivasan (IIITB), T.K. Srikanth (IIITB), V.Sridhar (IIITB) along with Neelanjana Sharma, Amol Kulkarni and Prince Gupta (from Consumer Unity & Trust Society, Jaipur)

Funding agency: Centre for Effective Global Action (CEGA), University of California, Berkeley.

Description: This project will be a mixed methods study conducted at IIITB with support from partners at Consumer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS). The study will have four parts: an initial controlled observational analysis, a large-scale survey supplemented by in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and finally a contextual observational analysis. Focusing on a diverse group of Digital Financial Services (DFS) consumers in India, researchers will learn about the Attitudes, Concerns and Perspectives (ACP) of consumers towards their data and privacy, how different consumer subgroups evaluate trade-offs between access and privacy, and how they navigate privacy boundaries with their lenders and associated third parties.

CITAPP at IIIT Bangalore is an interdisciplinary think-tank set-up to focus on the policy challenges and the organizational demands made by technological innovation. Of particular interest to the Centre is how technological advances, along with institutional changes that harness the legitimacy and the powers of bureaucracies and market, address the needs of underserved communities.