Are certain types of microtargeting more acceptable? Comparing US, German, and Dutch citizens’ attitudes

Much of the research on political microtargeting has focused on growing public concerns about its use in elections, fuelling calls for greater regulation or even a ban on the practice. We contend that a more nuanced understanding of public attitudes toward microtargeting is required before further regulation is considered. Drawing on advertising psychology research and the results of academic analyses into microtargeting, we argue that individual concern, and by corollary, acceptance of microtargeting will vary based on socio-demographic characteristics and political orientations, and the type of personal data used. We hypothesise that microtargeting that relies on observable or publicly accessible personal information will be more accepted by voters than that which uses unobserved and inferred traits. We test these expectations and the expected variance of public acceptance by individual characteristics using comparative survey data from the US, Germany, and the Netherlands. We find that across countries and socio-demographic groups, not all microtargeting is considered equally problematic. For example, whereas the use of age and gender is generally deemed acceptable, the use of sexual orientation is not, and right-leaning individuals are more accepting than those who lean left. Additionally, overall, the US is more accepting of microtargeting than Germany or the Netherlands. Thus, we find that not all microtargeting is considered equally problematic across countries and socio-demographic groups. We conclude by calling for a more contextualised debate about the benefits and costs of political microtargeting and its use of “sensitive” data before the expansion of current regulation.