Motive perception pathways to the release of personal information to healthcare organizations

BACKGROUND: The goal of the study is to assess the downstream effects of who requests personal information from individuals for artificial intelligence-(AI) based healthcare research purposes—be it a pharmaceutical company (as an example of a for-profit organization) or a university hospital (as an example of a not-for-profit organization)—as well as their boundary conditions on individuals’ likelihood to release personal information about their health. For the latter, the study considers two dimensions: the tendency to self-disclose (which is aimed to be high so that AI applications can reach their full potential) and the tendency to falsify (which is aimed to be low so that AI applications are based on both valid and reliable data). METHODS: Across three experimental studies with Amazon Mechanical Turk workers from the U.S. (n = 204, n = 330, and n = 328, respectively), Covid-19 was used as the healthcare research context. RESULTS: University hospitals (vs. pharmaceutical companies) score higher on altruism and lower on egoism. Individuals were more willing to disclose data if they perceived that the requesting organization acts based on altruistic motives (i.e., the motives function as gate openers). Individuals were more likely to protect their data by intending to provide false information when they perceived egoistic motives to be the main driver for the organization requesting their data (i.e., the motives function as a privacy protection tool). Two moderators, namely message appeal (Study 2) and message endorser credibility (Study 3) influence the two indirect pathways of the release of personal information. CONCLUSION: The findings add to Communication Privacy Management Theory as well as Attribution Theory by suggesting motive-based pathways to the release of correct personal health data. Compared to not-for-profit organizations, for-profit organizations are particularly recommended to match their message appeal with the organizations’ purposes (to provide personal benefit) and to use high-credibility endorsers in order to reduce inherent disadvantages in motive perceptions. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12911-022-01986-4.