Stimulating data marketplace adoption in manufacturing: The impact of perceived control on willingness to share data

Data marketplaces potentially accelerate digital transformation in the manufacturing industries as they enable businesses to share Internet-of-Things (IoT) data. As data marketplaces are business-to-business (B2B) platforms that mediate between unrelated businesses, managers often fear losing control over shared data (or, in other words, losing data sovereignty). However, despite extensive work in the technical community to create control mechanisms, the impact of enhanced control on data marketplace adoption by data owners remains unclear. This study develops and tests a theoretical model that relates perceived control to willingness to share data in the context of IoT data marketplaces for manufacturing industries. We surveyed 299 managers in manufacturing businesses using a scenario of a data marketplace that allowed data owners to control their data offerings directly through smart contracts that enforce data sharing conditions. We find that perceived control significantly impacts willingness to share data. The effect is partially mediated by lower risk perceptions but not by trust in data buyers. The research shows the importance of perceived control for data sharing intentions, implying that data marketplace operators should provide noticeable control mechanisms to foster adoption. This research contributes to the broader platform control literature by theorising reflective supply-side control, an underexplored phenomenon where supply-side control (e.g., data owners) over the demand side (e.g., data buyers) shapes the supply side's own behaviour.