Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Mar 4, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Mar 4, 2021 - Apr 29, 2021
Date Accepted: Nov 16, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Nov 24, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Predictors to use mobile apps for monitoring COVID-19 symptoms and contact tracing: A survey among Dutch citizens.
ABSTRACT
Background:
eHealth applications have been recognized as a valuable tool to reduce COVID-19’s effective reproduction number. The factors that determine acceptance of COVID-19 apps are unknown. The exception here is privacy.
Objective:
The aim of this article was to identify antecedents of acceptance of 1) a mobile application for COVID-19 symptom recognition and monitoring, and 2) a mobile application for contact tracing, both by means of an online survey among Dutch citizens.
Methods:
Next to the demographics, the online survey contained questions focusing on perceived health, fear of COVID-19 and intention to use. We used snowball sampling via posts on social media and personal connections. To identify antecedents of the model for acceptance of the two mobile applications we conducted multiple linear regression analyses.
Results:
In total, 238 Dutch adults completed the survey. Almost 60% of the responders were female and the average age was 45.6 years (SD±17.4). For the symptom app, the final model included the predictors age, attitude towards technology and fear of COVID-19. The model had an r2 of 0.141. The final model for the tracing app included the same predictors and had an r2 of 0.156. The main reason to use both mobile applications was to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Concerns about privacy was mentioned as the main reason not to use the mobile applications.
Conclusions:
Age, attitude towards technology and fear of COVID-19 are important predictors of the acceptance of COVID-19 mobile applications for symptom recognition and monitoring and for contact tracing. These predictors should be taken into account during the development and implementation of these mobile applications to secure acceptance.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
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.