Zhiqi Chen
2019 SSHRC Insight Grant
Consumer Protection in the Age of Internet Commerce and Big Data
Last year, Canadians spent more than one billion dollars online. But along with that growth comes an increase in the commercial use of personal data and misleading pricing practices by Internet retailers.
Professor Chen has received $72,950 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to look at consumer protections within the e-commerce marketplace. He intends to conduct an analysis of the interactions between the collection and use of personal data by Internet firms and consumer’s privacy concerns, with the assumption that “privacy has intrinsic value which differs among consumers.”