Privacy Protection and Firm Performance:An Empirical Study Based on the Personal Information Protection Law
Data,as a new factor of production following capital and labor,is an important foun-dation and driver for economic development,bringing about a series of changes in social and eco-nomic forms.However,in the process of data acquisition and processing,users often face the risks of personal information abuse and leakage.Balancing the relation between personal informa-tion protection and business development has become a major challenge in the current develop-ment of the digital economy.Based on the Personal Information Protection Law of the People's Republic of China enacted in 2021 and leveraging natural language processing methods,this pa-per constructs a difference-in-differences(DID)model to study the impact of privacy protection policies on firm performance indicators.The findings indicate that strengthening the protection of personal information has a positive effect on firm growth indicators,which is more significant in non-state-owned enterprises,larger enterprises,and enterprises with lower current liability rati-os.Mechanism analysis shows that under the influence of privacy protection policies,companies increase their R&D expenditures and the application number of patents for privacy-friendly pa-tents,and attach more significance to the construction of product quality and fair competition concepts.At the same time,privacy protection policies lead to an increase in industry concentra-tion,with leading enterprises having more resources,further enhancing their market competitive advantages.
privacy protectionPersonal Information Protection Lawfirm performance
万方数据
