JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The COVID-19 pandemic gave rise to countless user-facing mobile applications to help fight the pandemic (“COVID mitigation apps”). These apps have been at the center of data privacy discussions because they collect, use, and even retain sensitive personal data from their users (e.g., medical records, location data). The U.S. government ended its COVID-19 emergency declaration in May 2023, marking a unique time to comprehensively investigate how data privacy impacted people's acceptance of various COVID mitigation apps deployed throughout the pandemic.

Objective:

This research aims to provide insights into health data privacy regarding COVID mitigation apps, and policy recommendations for future deployment of public health mobile apps through the lens of data privacy. This research explores people's contextual acceptance of different types of COVID mitigation apps by applying the privacy framework of Contextual Integrity. Specifically, this research seeks to identify the factors that impact people’s acceptance of data sharing and data retention practices in various social contexts.

Methods:

An online survey was conducted by recruiting a simple US representative sample (N=674) on Prolific in February 2023. The survey includes a total of 60 vignette scenarios representing realistic social contexts that COVID mitigation apps could be used. Each survey respondent answered questions about their acceptance of 10 randomly selected scenarios. Three Contextual Integrity parameters (attribute, recipient, and transmission principle) and respondents’ basic demographics are controlled as independent variables. Regression analysis was performed to determine the factors that may impact people's acceptance of initial data sharing and retention practices via these apps. Qualitative data from the survey was analyzed to support the statistical results.

Results:

Many CI parameter values, pairwise combinations of CI parameter values, and some demographic features of respondents significantly impact their acceptance of using COVID mitigation apps in various social contexts. Respondents’ acceptance of data retention practices diverged from their initial sharing practices in some scenarios.

Conclusions:

This study showed that people’s acceptance of using various COVID mitigation apps depends on specific social contexts including type of data (attribute), recipients of the data(recipient), and the purpose of data use (transmission principle). Such acceptance may differ between the initial data sharing and the retention practices even in the same scenario. Study findings generated rich implications for future public health mobile apps regarding data privacy, long-term strategies, and deployment considerations.