Users' willingness to pay for web identity management systems

Received: 21 January 2011 Revised: 15 July 2011 2nd Revision: 06 February 2012 3rd Revision: 10 September 2012 4th Revision: 19 September 2013 Accepted: 30 September 2013 Abstract Electronic services such as virtual communities or electronic commerce demand user authentication. Several more or less successful federated identity management systems have emerged to support authentication across diverse service domains in recent years. In this paper, we explore the determinants for success and failure of such systems with a focus on Germany representing one of the largest markets in Europe. To achieve this goal, we analyze the preferences and willingness to pay of prospective users by conducting a choice-based conjoint analysis. Our results indicate that users prefer simple systems where an intermediary takes care of their data. An additional market analyses confirms these findings and contradicts the assumptions of many researchers, especially in the fields of engineering and computer science, supporting systems with higher and higher levels of privacy and security. European Journal of Information Systems (2014) 23, 36–50. doi:10.1057/ejis.2013.33; published online 19 November 2013