JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

During the COVID-19 worldwide pandemic crisis, the role of digital contact tracing intensified. However, the uptake of this technology expectedly differed among age cohorts and national cultures.

Objective:

By replicating the research design of Walrave, Waeterloos and Ponnet (2020), the study attempted to confirm the predictors of digital contact tracing adoption in a cultural environment different from the original setting.

Methods:

A Czech version of the original instrument was administered to a convenience sample of young (18-29 y.o.) Czech adults in November 2020. After filtering, 519 valid responses were obtained and included in the quantitative data analysis, which employed structural equation modeling and followed the proposed structure of the relationships among the Health Belief Model (HBM) constructs. Furthermore, a qualitative thematic analysis of the free-text answers was carried out to provide additional insights about the model validity in the given context.

Results:

The proposed measurement model exhibited a less-optimal fit (RMSEA=.065, 90% CI .060-0.070) than in the original study (RMSEA=.036, 90% CI .033-.039). Nevertheless, Perceived Benefits and Perceived Barriers were confirmed as the main, statistically significant predictors of digital contact tracing uptake, being in line with the original study. Self-efficacy showed only a trend towards statistical significance. In addition, the qualitative analysis demonstrated that in the given cohort, Perceived Barriers was the most frequent theme. Under this category, Psychological fears and concerns was a sub-theme notably diverging from the original operationalization of the Perceived Barriers construct. In a similar sense, a role for social influence in digital contact tracing uptake processes was suggested by several respondents. In sum, the quantitative and qualitative results indicated that the proposed quantitative model seemed to be of limited value in the examined context.

Conclusions:

Future research should focus on re-conceptualizing the two under-performing constructs (Perceived Severity and Cues to Action) by considering the qualitative findings.