Journal
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL POLITICAL SCIENCE
Volume 9, Issue 1, Pages 118-130Publisher
CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1017/XPS.2020.30
Keywords
Digital contact tracing; privacy; data breach; conjoint experiment
Categories
Funding
- Economic and Social Research Council [ES/R005133/1]
- Exeter Q-Step Centre
- College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter
- Turing Fellowship, The Alan Turing Institute, UK
- ESRC [ES/R005133/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Economic and Social Research Council [ES/R005133/1] Funding Source: researchfish
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Citizens' concerns about data privacy and security breaches may impact the adoption of COVID-19 contact tracing mobile apps, but the level of privacy priority varies among individuals. The study found that a mixture of digital and human contact tracing is supported, and the COVID-19 pandemic and trust in the national public health service system alleviate public concerns about privacy.
Citizens' concerns about data privacy and data security breaches may reduce the adoption of COVID-19 contact tracing mobile phone applications, making them less effective. We implement a choice experiment (conjoint experiment) where participants indicate which version of two contact tracing apps they would install, varying the apps' privacy-preserving attributes. Citizens do not always prioritise privacy and prefer a centralised National Health Service system over a decentralised system. In a further study asking about participants' preference for digital-only vs human-only contact tracing, we find a mixture of digital and human contact tracing is supported. We randomly allocated a subset of participants in each study to receive a stimulus priming data breach as a concern, before asking about contact tracing. The salient threat of unauthorised access or data theft does not significantly alter preferences in either study. We suggest COVID-19 and trust in a national public health service system mitigate respondents' concerns about privacy.
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