Experiment 2 - Choices and Nudging
The second experiment explores how internet users interact with cookie consent banners depending on the choices given in the banner.
There had been five different types of cookie banners:
- No option banners, where users could not accept nor decline cookies, but only to dismiss the cookie banner and remove it from the screen,
- Confirmation banners, where users could only accept the cookies
- Binary banners, with one button for accepting and one for declining cookies
- Cookie banners with consent requests for each processing purpose
- Cookie banner where the user had been allowed to choose among the vendors that process data on behalf of the controller
All the banners had a nudging and non-nudging version, except the no-option banner.
Figure 02 - Visitors' consent choices in Experiment 2. "Accept"/"Decline" indicate that (all) options were accepted or declined. "Other" includes those who accepted/declined only some options. Bold figures indicate default options.
The charts above show that nudging and preselection of processing purposes influence cookie banner interaction.
Users had been more likely to interact with the banner if the ACCEPT button was highlighted instead of just a link for accepting cookies.
In the binary banners, where there was an ACCEPT and a DECLINE button, users were more likely to accept the cookies if the ACCEPT button was highlighted instead of the DECLINE button.
In addition, the research showed that pre-selected checkboxes for giving consent to specific processing purposes increase the chances of giving consent. Although explicitly prohibited under the GDPR and has been subjected to the Planet49 decision, it turns out that it works well in practice.
When users had been given non-pre-selected checkboxes, they had not interacted with the cookie banner as much. Moreover, providing them with information on vendors that process their personal data further decreased the interaction rates.
Immensely few website visitors bothered to select processing purposes at all.
In the follow-up survey, 38 participants who opted for the processing of specific purposes praised the increased transparency of the cookie banners providing the opportunity to make their own selection.
Others were not happy with the technical language (such as a necessary cookie). In contrast, those who declined cookies had stated that they did not need a personalized experience because they had come only for the website content.
When it comes to declining cookies, most of the follow-up survey participants had stated that they expected that the website wouldn’t work properly upon declining cookies.
Those who accepted the cookies knew, to some extent, how cookies work and how they improve their website visits.
