Government institutions and data custodianship over personal information: Comparing citizen preferences in Hong Kong and South Korea

Public administration researchers traditionally approach the use of personal information in public service through the lens of direct user control, but a combination of cognitive constraints and rapid digitization has made privacy-preserving choices exceedingly difficult for citizens to manage independently. Recent research has shifted toward the notion of “data custodianship”, where public institutions serve as custodians of personal information. In a survey experiment conducted in Hong Kong ( n = 1031) and South Korea ( n = 1040), citizens evaluated their trust in various institutions serving as custodians tasked with managing biometric information for facial recognition. The findings suggest that while institutional trust can be influenced by accountability mechanisms, it is also shaped by individuals' experiences with public institutions, as well as their political orientation, social trust, and privacy preferences. Trust in one functional domain of data custodianship—such as data collection—may not carry over to others, like storage or management. Custodianship is only viable as a policy alternative to user control in data-intensive solutions if its design accounts for variation in public trust across societies, individuals, and aspects of data governance.