Analysis On The Effect Of Personal Information Protection Policy From The Perspective Of Information Externalities

With the development of digital economy and data technology,the platform economy is growing rapidly,and data has become an important resource in the digital economy era.However,with the rapid development of some big Internet enterprises,governments and the public have also expressed widespread concern about the collection and abuse of personal information by enterprises.At present,data security and consumer privacy protection have become the international consensus to maintain the healthy development of the digital economy.In terms of personal information protection policies worldwide,the EU emphasizes the control of data subjects over personal data,and the regulation is stricter;While the United States focuses on the free flow of data and the development of the digital economy,the regulation is looser.The rational choice of government related policy tools is crucial to promoting the healthy development of the digital economy.How to use personal information reasonably,give play to the value of big data,and protect personal information from being abused in the age of big data requires governments to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of different personal information protection policies based on different policy goals.China is establishing and improving national data security management system,fulfilling data security goals and standardizing the collection and utilization of personal information of consumers by enterprises.Whether it is imitating the strict EU regulatory model or following the loose regulation of the United States,this issue is very critical for China today and deserves our serious consideration.The Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee formally listed data as a national basic and strategic new resource and factor of production.The digital economy has become one of the main driving force for China’s economic growth.The research in this paper is conducive to strengthening the understanding of how to improve and develop data regulation,more effectively supervising the privacy violations in the rapid development of the data element market,and providing valuable reference for the public policy choice of personal information protection policies in the digital economy.How the government implements data supervision is a particularly prominent discussion in the theoretical research of personal information protection policies.When paying attention to the issues of data disclosure and consumer privacy protection,we need to pay attention to the information externalities.The information collected by platform enterprises from a specific subject may not only involve the personal information of the subject to be collected,but also further reveal the information of its peers or even other individuals closely associated with it,thus causing privacy damage to other people.The widespread existence of information externalities will undoubtedly affect the policy effect of relevant privacy regulation,which needs due attention.Compared with the existing research,this paper innovatively introduces information externalities into the research on the effectiveness of personal information protection policies.At the same time,based on the policy differences between different countries or regions in reality,the personal information protection policies are divided into loose personal information protection policies and strict personal information protection policies,among which the loose personal information protection policies are subdivided into two categories:the level of regulatory data collection and the degree of regulatory information externality.Build a mathematical model to analyze the data collection and price choice of enterprises in different personal information protection policies,and their impact on enterprise profits,consumer surplus and total social welfare.The results of this study show that although the personal information protection policy that regulates the level of information collection can bring the highest consumer surplus and total social welfare,its performance in protecting consumer privacy is the worst.Although the personal information protection policy that regulates the degree of information externality has the best performance in protecting consumer privacy,it has brought the lowest consumer surplus and total social welfare.Although the strict personal information protection policy not only gives consideration to the overall social welfare,but also prevents consumers’ personal information from being excessively collected,considering the high regulatory cost,the strict personal information protection policy is likely to be inefficient.With the formal implementation of the Data Security Law,China’s legal system on national data security has been further improved.On November 1,2021,the Personal Information Protection Law came into force,which was a milestone in the field of privacy protection.It is suggested that the government focuses on the outstanding problems in reality,weigh the interests of all parties,adhere to the policy goal orientation,and reasonably select the privacy policy supervision tools.If the government takes the overall social welfare as the policy orientation,then the most effective personal information protection policy is to regulate the level of information collection.If the government takes the protection of consumer privacy as the policy orientation,then the most effective information protection policy is to prohibit the collection of external information.