You have been in Close Contact with a Person Infected with COVID-19 and you may have been Infected: Understanding Privacy Concerns, Trust and Adoption in Mobile COVID-19 Tracing Across Four Countries

Through the past two and a half years, COVID-19 has swept through the world and new technologies for mitigating spread, such as exposure notification applications and contact tracing, have been implemented in many countries. However, the uptake has differed from country to country and it has not been clear if culture, death rates or information dissemination have been a factor in their adoption rate. However, these apps introduce issues of trust and privacy protection, which can create challenges in terms of adoptions and daily use. In this paper we present the results from a cross-country survey study of potential barriers to adoption of in particular COVID-19 contact tracing apps. We found that people's existing privacy concerns are an have a reverse correlation with adoption behavior but that the geographical location, as well as other demographics, such as age and gender, do not have significant effect on either adoption of the app or privacy concerns. Instead, a better understanding of what data is collected through the apps lead to a higher level of adoption. We provide suggestions for how to approach the development and deployment of contact tracing apps and more broadly health tracking apps.