An Examination of People’s Privacy Concerns, Perceptions of Social Benefits, and Acceptance of COVID-19 Mitigation Measures That Harness Location Information: A Comparative Study of the U.S. and South Korea

Abstract

This paper examines people’s privacy concerns, perceptions of social benefits, and acceptance of various COVID-19 control measures that harness location information using data collected through an online survey in the U.S. and South Korea. The results indicate that people have higher privacy concerns for methods that use more sensitive and private information. The results also reveal that people’s perceptions of social benefits are low when their privacy concerns are high, indicating a trade-off relationship between privacy concerns and perceived social benefits. Moreover, the acceptance by South Koreans for most mitigation methods is significantly higher than that by people in the U.S. Lastly, the regression results indicate that South Koreans (compared to people in the U.S.) and people with a stronger collectivist orientation tend to have higher acceptance for the control measures because they have lower privacy concerns and perceive greater social benefits for the measures. These findings advance our understanding of the important role of geographic context and culture as well as people’s experiences of the mitigation measures applied to control a previous pandemic.

Conflicting attitudes: Analyzing social media data to understand the early discourse on COVID-19 passports

“…Researchers have examined people's privacy concerns and acceptance of various COVID-19 control measures. For example, a survey of U.S. and Korean individuals by Kim and Kwan [ 23 ] focused on the geographic location and context in understanding privacy concerns surrounding COVID-19 policies and found that due to the collectivist nature of the Korean society, vaccination passports have a comparatively greater acceptance there. It can thus be deduced that other collectivists cultures in Asia and Africa may have a greater acceptability of COVID-19 passports than Europe and North America.…”

A Comprehensive Analysis of Privacy Protection Techniques Developed for COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Sihombing et al [27] discussed the privacy protection methods adopted by nine different countries. In addition, other researchers have presented reviews about the country-specific privacy-protection methods used in the COVID-19 era [28]- [30]. Furthermore, some surveys have been published on the quantification of privacy risks [31], as to the nature of digital solutions (e.g., centralized or decentralized) [32], on the (non)acceptability of digital apps [33], on emerging technologies' privacy issues in COVID-19 context [34], about privacy controversies towards aggressive use of information technology amid the pandemic [35], and on healthcare privacy challenges in COVID-19 period [36].…”

Travel time errors caused by geomasking might be different between transportation modes and types of urban area

“…In recent years, data sharing has become critical as research reproducibility has received growing attention in the scientific community (Alter & Gonzalez, 2018; Kedron, Li, Fotheringham, & Goodchild, 2021; McNutt, 2014). In the field of geographic information science (GIScience) and public health, however, sharing data can often lead to serious geoprivacy violation because data often contain people's confidential locational information, such as home locations and daily GPS trajectories (Haley et al., 2016; Kim & Kwan, 2021a; Kim, Kwan, Levenstein, & Richardson, 2021; Kounadi & Leitner, 2014; Kwan, Casas, & Schmitz, 2004; Richardson, Kwan, Alter, & McKendry, 2015). To protect people's geoprivacy when sharing data, researchers have developed and applied various geomasking techniques, which deliberately introduce spatial errors to location data to reduce disclosure risks (Armstrong, Rushton, & Zimmerman, 1999; Curtis, Mills, Agustin, & Cocknurn, 2011; Zandbergen, 2014).…”