How Much Will You Pay to Use Open Data?: Evidence from the Seoul Metropolitan Government

Abstract

In line with the emerging data economy, governments and businesses are exploring how to drive value through data usage. As a part of this notable trend, open government data (OGD), through which a variety of public information is available for free use at online websites, has been shaping new opportunities for nations, society, and enterprises. While researchers and policymakers have focused on how and what to provide for better practices in innovative digital public service, the actual value created from the data offering has received scant attention. This study fills the gap by measuring the monetary value of the OGD service as a stated willingness to pay (WTP). To do this, we collaborated with the Seoul Metropolitan Government, which operates one of the largest and most active online OGD portals in the world, offering over 20 million documents and other forms of information. We consider three stakeholder groups—people using OGD, people not using OGD, and city officials—to compare their assessments of emerging public digital goods. Our estimates suggest that people using OGD are willing to pay $0.8 a month for the service, on average, in the most conservative approach; however, this value is not significantly different from that of people not using OGD ($0.6). Instead, we find that a higher proportion of people using OGD refuse to pay any amount for the service than people not using OGD, whereas a higher proportion of city officials give true zero responses than people not using OGD. We discuss the merits and limitations of quantifying intangible digitized public goods and propose future directions.

Keywords:

• Open government data
• contingent valuation approach
• willingness to pay
• spike model

Notes

1 To compare group differences of the user, the employee, and the citizen groups, we define two dummy variables. The user group is one for users and zero, otherwise, and the employee group is one for employees and zero, otherwise.

2 The monthly unique number of users was 209,258, on average, at the time of the survey research. The number of citizens was 6,357,229, which was calculated as the population aged 20–60 for the purpose of obtaining data and information in Seoul city.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chihong Jeon

Chihong Jeon is a Ph.D. Candidate in Information Systems at KAIST College of Business in South Korea. His research topics are economics of IT, social network analysis, applications of AI in business.

Daegon Cho

Daegon Cho is an Ewon Associate Professor of Information Systems at KAIST College of Business in South Korea. He received a Ph.D. in information systems and management from Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College. His research topics are business analytics, economics of IT, and applications of AI/ML to businesses. His research appeared at Information Systems Research, Marketing Science, Production and Operations Management, and Journal of the AIS and other journals.

Hyo-Youn Chu

Hyo-Youn Chu is an Associate Professor of International Studies Department at Kyung Hee University in South Korea. She received a Ph.D. In Economics from Boston University. Her research topics are industrial organization, environmental economics, law economics, economics of IT, and applied econometrics. Her research appeared at Energy Efficiency, American Review of Public Administration, European Journal of Law and Economics and other journals.