Digital Health Innovation: Exploring Adoption of COVID-19 Digital Contact Tracing Apps

Abstract

With the outbreak of COVID-19, contact tracing is becoming a used intervention to control the spread of this highly infectious disease. This article explores an individual's intention to adopt COVID-19 digital contact tracing (DCT) apps. A conceptual framework developed for this article combines the procedural fairness theory, dual calculus theory, protection motivation theory, theory of planned behavior, and Hofstede's cultural dimension theory. The study adopts a quantitative approach collecting data from 714 respondents using a random sampling technique. The proposed model is tested using structural equation modeling. Empirical results found that the perceived effectiveness of privacy policy negatively influenced privacy concerns, whereas perceived vulnerability had a positive influence. Expected personal and community-related outcomes of sharing information positively influenced attitudes toward DCT apps, while privacy concerns had a negative effect. The intention to adopt DCT apps were positively influenced by attitude, subjective norms, and privacy self-efficacy. This article is the first to empirically test the adoption of DCT apps of the COVID-19 pandemic and contributes both theoretically and practically toward understanding factors influencing its widespread adoption.

Professional football clubs and empirical evidence from the COVID-19 crisis: Time for sport entrepreneurship?

“…Knock-on effects of the pandemic have hit football especially hard and clubs are rather downbeat when considering their prospects over the next season. Public health interventions, like social distancing measures, are effective but do not prevent virus reoccurrences ( Sharma et al., 2020 ). Even though governmental economic interventions have shown to be partially effective, they will not lead to a recovery to pre-crisis levels.…”

Contact tracing apps for the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic literature review of challenges and future directions for neo-liberal societies

“… Transparency— To encourage the willingness to adopt and use contact tracing apps, policymakers, developers, governments, and public health authorities in neo-liberal societies must adopt a feedback mechanism during the phases of deployment to create public confidence, trust and participation. Citizens deserve clarity on the purpose of data collection, types of data collected, who has access to such data, the modalities, extent and timeline for data deletion [ 35 , 58 , 59 , 71 , 78 , 94 , 116 ]. Influencing human behaviour— It is important to study human behaviour when designing and developing contact tracing apps and related digital technologies before deploying and integrating them amongst the population.…”

“… Influencing human behaviour— It is important to study human behaviour when designing and developing contact tracing apps and related digital technologies before deploying and integrating them amongst the population. This includes studying a significant amount of theories and models such as the technology acceptance model, innovation diffusion theory, the theory of reasoned action, health belief models and theory of planned behaviour, social cognitive theory, and motivation theory can be used to explore the acceptance and use of future contact tracing technologies [ 85 , 94 ]. Ethical considerations— For government, technology developers, decision-makers and public health authorities, there is the need to translate the ethical–legal considerations into actionable safeguards that can unlock the promise of contact tracing apps and related digital technologies while avoiding harm and managing risks in the fight against future pandemics [ 71 ].…”

“…Influencing human behaviour— It is important to study human behaviour when designing and developing contact tracing apps and related digital technologies before deploying and integrating them amongst the population. This includes studying a significant amount of theories and models such as the technology acceptance model, innovation diffusion theory, the theory of reasoned action, health belief models and theory of planned behaviour, social cognitive theory, and motivation theory can be used to explore the acceptance and use of future contact tracing technologies [ 85 , 94 ].…”

A two-step vaccination technique to limit COVID-19 spread using mobile data

“…Various methods could be employed to collect this information. These including Bluetooth signals to detect proximity and duration of contacts ( Leith & Farrell, 2020 ), base station antennas to determine the locations of users (cell tower triangulation), the GPS system to locate and track users, network of drones connected to a central system ( Saeed, Bader, Al-Naffouri, & Alouini, 2020 ), wireless sensor networks in the form of mobile and stationary sensors to monitor individuals ( Sun, Lu, Zhang, Salathé, & Cao, 2016 ), and scanning QR codes with mobile phones and storing the contact information of the individuals ( Sharma et al, 2020 ).…”