To share or not to share–exploring the willingness of industrial data providers to share data

Inter-organizational data sharing is a pivotal activity in generating value for business and the economy as a whole. In particular, those that hold valuable data–data providers–need to have sufficient motivation to decide to share data despite the array of potential downsides (e.g., malpractice by the data user or unclear business value). Subsequently, finding out what influences the willingness of data providers is a central activity in driving the data economy. In this paper, we report on the results of an explorative interview study and propose a conceptualization of the antecedents of the data providers' willingness to share data. Our results indicate two fundamental antecedents: perceived data-sharing reciprocity and perceived data-sharing trust. Both antecedents are dependent on several influencing antecedents that, in their sum total, conceptualize the data-sharing decision process. Our results contribute to uncovering the most significant part of data ecosystems–what needs to happen for data providers to share their data, which is both highly valuable for research and practice.