Self-quantification and the datapreneurial consumer identity

ABSTRACT

This study delivers a clearer understanding of the constitution of the datapreneurial consumer, the role of the market in that construction, and the implications for consumer identity projects in the age of Big Data and an increasingly data- and surveillance-driven society. The study uses a theoretical framework of the “quantified self” (QS) to examine consumers (re)building creditworthiness. In the context of a major online credit-user forum, it employs creative-nonfiction methodology to protect forum-member privacy. To the literature on creditworthiness, the study contributes a process model of the construction of the datapreneurial credit consumer identity. To the QS literature, it offers insight into how consumers may embrace quantification and self-tracking, even in areas where they are nudged or pushed into it. To the sociology of quantification literature, it adds empirics to explain how consumers may embrace market-provided self-quantification resources in attempts to liberate themselves from the structural control of that very quantification.