Psychological Factors Shaping Public Responses to COVID-19 Digital Contact Tracing Technologies in Germany
Anastasia Kozyreva, Philipp Lorenz-Spreen, Stephan Lewandowsky, Paul Michael Garrett, Stefan M. Herzog, Thorsten Pachur, Ralph Hertwig
Abstract
Please cite the published version: Kozyreva, A., Lorenz-Spreen, P., Lewandowsky, S. et al. Psychological factors shaping public responses to COVID-19 digital contact tracing technologies in Germany. Sci Rep 11, 18716 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-98249-5 Abstract: Digital contact-tracing technologies are being used for epidemiological purposes at scale for the first time in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This poses challenges for governments aiming at high and efficient uptake and for people weighing the advantages (e.g., public health) against the potential risks (e.g., loss of data privacy) of these unprecedented measures. Our cross-sectional survey with repeated measures across four samples in Germany (N = 4,357) focused on public perceptions of digital contact-tracing technologies and related attitudes toward privacy. We found that public acceptance of potential privacy-encroaching measures decreased over time. Levels of acceptability were high for all three hypothetical tracking apps representing a range of privacy encroachments. Intentions to download the actual tracking app (the Corona-Warn-App) that became available during our study were also high. However, this did not directly translate into actual uptake. Our results point to the crucial roles of trust in government and in the app's security, as well as of concerns about the app's effectiveness. A conflict between prosocial intentions and personal benefit on the one hand, and lack of trust in data security and the app's effectiveness on the other, are at the heart of people's decisions about whether to use digital contact-tracing technologies.