Bobbing for Apps: A Model of Public Attitudes Toward Mobile App Store Competition

Abstract

There has been a growing movement worldwide to regulate digital platform services in various respects. We have seen this in response to increased privacy concerns through measures such as the GDPR and the CCPA, as well as the debates regarding free speech and content moderation. But most recently, lawmakers in both the United States and the European Union have considered restricting the anticompetitive practices by large technology firms. In August of 2021, the Open App Markets Act was introduced in the Senate with the hopes of both promoting competitive practices such as interoperability and prohibiting exclusionary strategies such as the retention of consumer data for marketing purposes in mobile app stores. While the E.U. has passed the Digital Markets Act, the same cannot be said for the U.S. with only a few of these competition bills making it past subcommittee hearings. What can explain this? Specifically, this thesis poses three research questions:

What role does digital literacy play in shaping public attitudes towards competition in the app store market? How well aligned are consumers’ views toward app store competition and their behaviors in the app store market? How does support for competition in the app store market compare to support for data privacy initiatives?

To answer these questions, this thesis relies on the responses of a 279-participant survey that measures views on app store competition, demographic information, privacy concerns, consumer behaviors, mobile device activity, and familiarity with Internet and computer terms. Responses from this survey were used to create a multivariate regression table, measuring the relationship between app store competition views and these other factors. Distributions of aggregated and individual privacy concerns and app store competition support were compared. This is complemented by four expert interviews. This thesis finds that increased exposure to app store competition discourse, digital literacy, and privacy concerns lead to support of app store competition. It also finds that consumer views toward app store competition are not aligned with behaviors and are subject to framing effects. Lastly, this thesis finds that app store competition is not supported more than data privacy initiatives. The findings of this thesis can help policymakers decide what consumer factors to appeal to when creating app store competition policies, what issues these policies should address, how to frame app store competition, and what other policies could supplement app store competition bills.