Using Game Theory to Analyze Strategic Choices of Service Providers and Service Requesters

With the rapid development and popularization of Web services, online privacy has become a rising concern. In order to prevent service providers from abusing private information of service requesters, service providers are required to publish their privacy policies. If a service provider’s privacy policy is not consistent with a service requester’s privacy preference, the provider and the requester can negotiate. Whether the negotiation is successful or not depends on the strategic choices of the provider and the requester. This paper analyzes strategic choices of service providers and service requesters in negotiations by game theory. We propose a game theoretic model for negotiations between providers and requesters, discussing providers’ and requesters’ strategic choices in one-time negotiation and repeated negotiation. In addition, a case study is given to demonstrate how to use our game theoretic model to analyze the strategic choices of providers and requesters in negotiations.