The Price is Right? The Economic Value of Sharing Sensors

We study user’s valuations of smartphone sensing resources and the factors mediating them through a systematic auction study with 108 bids from N =18 participants, two resource use conditions [fixed battery (FB) and variable battery (VB)] and three sensors (camera, microphone, and GPS) with differing energy and privacy costs. We use a second-price sealed-bid reverse auction as this allows us to elicit the participants’ truthful perceived value for sharing resources. We show that most users would be willing to share even highly-privacy intrusive sensors if they are sufficiently compensated. At the FB level, participants placed much lower value for sharing GPS (€13) than camera (€30) or microphone (€32.5). The values people place on sharing access to resources generally reflect four considerations: 1) the perceived value of the sensor type; 2) the value of the data captured by the sensor; 3) the impact of sharing on the device; and 4) personal variations related to sharing motives, personal tendencies, and the broader sharing context. We address the practical impact of our results by presenting two case studies (collaborative sensing and collaborative AI). Finally, we derive design implications for sharing sensing resources on personal devices.