Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Nov 19, 2020
Date Accepted: Jan 16, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Jan 19, 2021
The Role of Transparency, Trust and Social Influence on Uncertainty Reduction in Times of Pandemics: An Empirical Study on the Adoption of COVID-19 Tracing Apps
ABSTRACT
Background:
Contact tracing apps are an essential component of an effective COVID-19 testing strategy to counteract the spread of the pandemic and thereby avoid overburdening the health care system. As the adoption rates in several regions are undesirable, governments must significantly increase the acceptance of COVID-19 tracing apps in these times of enormous uncertainty.
Objective:
Building on Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT), we investigated how uncertainty reduction measures foster the adoption of COVID-19 tracing apps and how their usage affects the perception of different risks.
Methods:
Representative survey data were gathered at two measurement points (before and after the release) and analyzed by performing covariance-based structural equation modelling (n=1003).
Results:
We found that uncertainty reduction measures in the form of the transparency dimensions disclosure and accuracy, as well as social influence and trust in government, foster the adoption process. The use of the COVID-19 tracing app in turn reduces the perceived privacy and performance risks but does not reduce social risks and health-related COVID-19 concerns.
Conclusions:
This work contributes to mass-adoption of healthcare technology and URT research by integrating interactive communication measures and transparency as a multi-dimensional concept to reduce different types of uncertainty over time. Furthermore, our results help to derive communication strategies to promote the mass-adoption of COVID-19 tracing apps, thus detecting infection chains and allowing intelligent COVID-19 testing.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.