Privacy and User Satisfaction in Digital Health Applications

Digital health applications are promising to healthcare due to their important position in the digital health ecosystem. User satisfaction with apps is crucial for their widespread use, but there are substantial concerns regarding the usage of users' health data preventing their dissemination. To study the relationship between privacy and user satisfaction, we utilize a dataset encompassing almost 94,412 apps from the Apple App Store. We apply propensity score matching to estimate the average treatment effects of multiple privacy settings that describe what data is collected and to what extent. We find that not collecting data on users is associated with a decrease in user satisfaction. Linking data to users' profiles and tracking users' data across applications increases user satisfaction. Our findings challenge the currently assumed relationship between the two variables and provide nuanced information for decision-makers about data collection in digital health applications.