Establishing a two-way transaction pricing model of “platform-individual” co-creation data property rights

In recent years, the data trading industry has thrived on data assetization. However, given the increasing privacy concerns of the main data providers—individual users—their willingness to disclose data is in decline. Meanwhile, enterprises may violate privacy laws by profiting from co-creation data without user permission, blocking a significant amount of co-creation data from full circulation. This study establishes the utility function of users under three choices—purchase, sale, and maintaining the status quo—that quantify the privacy calculus mechanism and introduce privacy-related variables, employing references and interviews with Tencent employees and users. Accordingly, examining the decision-making behavior of users helped establish a data property rights two-way transaction model comprising six scenarios and, hence, six corresponding platform decisions. Indeed, the model can solve the noted dilemma and realize a Pareto improvement of the utilities of the platform and users. This study contributes a new perspective, constructs a data property rights two-way transaction model, expands the pricing theory boundary, and provides a decision reference for data trading practice, allowing enterprises to establish new business models.