Does Privacy Regulation Harm Content Providers? A Longitudinal Analysis of the Impact of the GDPR
Management Science · 2026 · Vincent Lefrere、Logan Warberg、Cristobal Cheyre、Veronica Marotta、Alessandro Acquisti
中文摘要
欧盟《通用数据保护条例》(GDPR)是否会对新闻和媒体网站创造新的优质内容的能力造成不利影响,这一担忧在文献中尚未得到充分研究。我们构建了一个涵盖欧盟(EU)和美国新闻与媒体网站的纵向数据集,以研究在线内容提供商如何随时间推移应对GDPR,以及该条例对在线追踪实施的潜在限制是否影响了其下游结果。我们发现有稳健证据表明,欧盟和美国的新闻与媒体网站均通过改变其数据收集做法来应对该条例,但应对方式有所不同:欧盟网站降低追踪和实施同意机制的比例高于美国同类网站。尽管我们检测到欧盟网站相对于美国网站在人均页面浏览量上有所下降,但无论是在短期还是长期,我们均未发现其对欧盟网站提供新内容或该内容的若干质量代理指标(如社交媒体互动指标、各类流量指标以及文章文本分析)产生负面影响的证据。我们同样未发现欧盟与美国新闻和媒体网站之间存在生存率差异的证据,也未发现欧盟网站相对于美国网站以更高比例改变变现策略的证据。分析表明,欧盟在线内容提供商确实为应对GDPR而改变了其数据收集做法,但能够运用数据最小化和同意机制策略,使其得以继续创作内容并以与美国同类网站相当的程度吸引受众。本文由D. J. Wu(信息系统)录用。资助:作者衷心感谢Alfred P. Sloan基金会、CARNOT Télécom & Société numérique、DATAIA融合研究所(作为由Institut Mines Telecom运营的未来投资计划[资助号ANR-17-CONV-0003]的一部分,Business School Project YPOOG)、法国国家研究署[资助号ANR-21-CE23-0031-02]以及美国国家科学基金会[资助号2237327、2237328和2237329]的支持。补充材料:在线附录和数据文件可在 https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.03186 获取。
Abstract
Concerns that the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) would adversely affect the ability of news and media websites to create new quality content have not been thoroughly investigated in the literature. We construct a longitudinal data set of European Union (EU) and U.S. news and media websites to study how online content providers responded to the GDPR over time and whether potential restrictions on online tracking enforced by the regulation affected their downstream outcomes. We find robust evidence that both EU and U.S. news and media websites responded to the regulation by altering their data collection practices, but did so differently, with EU websites reducing tracking and implementing consent mechanisms at higher rates than their U.S. counterparts. Although we detect a reduction in average page views per user on EU relative to U.S. websites, we do not find evidence of negative impacts, in both the short and long term, on EU websites’ provision of new content or on several proxies for quality of that content, such as social media engagement metrics, various traffic measures, and articles’ text analytics. We also find no evidence of differences in survival rates across EU and U.S. news and media websites, and no evidence that monetization strategies changed at higher rates on EU relative to U.S. websites. The analysis suggests that EU online content providers did implement changes to their data collection practices in response to the GDPR but were able to use data minimization and consent mechanism strategies that allowed them to keep producing content and engage audiences at degrees on par with their U.S. counterparts. This paper was accepted by D. J. Wu, information systems. Funding: The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, CARNOT Télécom & Société numérique, DATAIA Convergence Institute (as part of the Programme d’Investissement d’Avenir [Grant ANR-17-CONV-0003] operated by Institut Mines Telecom, Business School Project YPOOG), the French National Research Agency [Grant ANR-21-CE23-0031-02], and the National Science Foundation [Awards 2237327, 2237328, and 2237329]. Supplemental Material: The online appendices and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.03186 .