Recently, a collaborative paper titled Data portability and the collection of personal data, authored by Professor Zhang Jianhu from the School of Economics, was officially published in International Journal of Industrial Organization, an authoritative international journal in industrial economics. This research is a phased achievement of the National Natural Science Foundation General Project The Theoretical Basis, Action Path and Policy Recommendations of Regulating Dominant Platforms with Data Portability Rights. The study reveals that while data portability rights can break platforms’ "data lock-in effect", they weaken initial competition among enterprises, drive up service prices, and prompt enterprises to collect more user data, potentially harming consumer welfare. The policy effect is highly dependent on the degree of market differentiation. Professor Zhang Jianhu is the corresponding author of the paper, with collaborator Professor Li Youping from the School of Business at East China University of Science and Technology.

Focusing on the personal data portability rights policy widely implemented globally in the digital economy era, this paper systematically evaluates the impact of data portability on market competition, corporate data collection behavior, and social welfare. Currently, in addition to the EU’s GDPR and China’s Personal Information Protection Law, Australia has implemented data portability and sharing in banking, energy and other industries through the Consumer Data Right (CDR) framework; India has strengthened data portability rights in the financial sector via the Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA); California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA) grants consumers data portability rights; Brazil’s General Data Protection Law (LGPD) and the 2022 revised version of Japan’s Personal Information Protection Act (APPI) have incorporated similar provisions. However, the study points out that the actual effects of such policies, which aim to break platform "lock-in effects" and promote competition, may deviate from their original intentions: while data portability eliminates data lock-in and strengthens post-entry competition, it weakens enterprises’ incentives for competition during the data collection phase, leading to higher upfront prices, increased corporate data collection, and potential harm to consumer welfare. The paper further reveals that the degree of market differentiation is a key factor determining policy effects—data portability may achieve Pareto improvement in low-competition markets but may cause overall welfare losses in highly competitive markets. This finding provides an important theoretical basis for optimizing data governance rules worldwide, reminding policymakers to prudently implement data portability systems based on specific market structure characteristics and avoid the negative effects of a "one-size-fits-all" regulatory approach.

Zhang Jianhu is a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Economics, Shandong University, a Distinguished Young Scholar of Taishan Scholars in Shandong Province, and a visiting scholar at The University of Queensland in Australia and the National University of Singapore. He earned his PhD from the School of Economics at Nankai University. His research focuses on industrial organization theory (with an emphasis on digital economy, R&D competition and other issues). His research findings have been published in domestic and international journals including International Journal of Industrial Organization (two papers), Oxford Economic Papers, Canadian Journal of Economics, Journal of Public Economic Theory, and Economic Quarterly. He has presided over multiple National Natural Science Foundation projects.