Put your Data where your Mouth is: Exploring the Viability of WhatsApp Data Donations to investigate Interpersonal Relationships

This study combined a questionnaire with data donations to explore the viability of anonymized WhatsApp data donations for investigating interpersonal relationships. We examined differences in willingness to donate, actual donations, and participants’ removal of parts of the data before donation (self-censorship) across a range of demographic, psychological and relationship-relevant characteristics. In our opt-in study, about 70% of participants stated to be willing to donate, with younger participants being more willing, and willing participants exhibiting less concerns for privacy than unwilling participants. We found some evidence pointing to women being more willing to donate than men. Overall, we observed an intention-behavior gap with only 68% of willing participants actually donating. We did not find significant differences between donors and non-donors based on univariate tests (e.g., gender, age, personality, relationship status) but found some evidence for personality and sexual orientation as potentially influential factors in a logistic regression model. We discuss implications for conducting WhatsApp data donation studies, limitations, and directions for future research.