Research Discussion Paper – RDP 2024-02 Valuing Safety and Privacy in Retail Central Bank Digital Currency

This paper explores the merits of introducing a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) in Australia, focusing on the extent to which consumers would value having access to a digital form of money that is even safer and potentially more private than commercial bank deposits. To conduct our exploration we run a discrete choice experiment, which is a technique designed specifically for assessing public valuations of goods without markets. The results suggest that the average consumer attaches no value to the added safety of a CBDC. This is consistent with bank deposits in Australia already being perceived as a safe form of money, and physical cash issued by the Reserve Bank of Australia continuing to be available as an alternative option. Privacy settings of a CBDC, which can take various forms, look more consequential for the CBDC value proposition. We find no clear relationship between safety or privacy valuations and the degree of consumers’ cash use.