Attitudes Towards COVID-19 Contact Tracing Apps: A Cross-National Survey

Abstract

To help prevent the spread of COVID-19, countries around the world have implemented a range of measures and virus containment strategies, including digital contact-tracing (DCT) in the form of smartphone apps. While early studies showed a high level of acceptability of such technologies, the adoption rates varied greatly between countries after contact-tracing apps became available to download. This cross-national user survey ( ${n}=871$ ) aims to explore public attitudes and factors that affect user acceptability and adoption of contact-tracing apps in the USA, UK, and the Republic of Ireland, which employ similar underlying technology, but have uneven adoption rates. The results indicate interactions between installation decisions and public trust in actors and institutions communicating COVID-related information, and releasing such technologies. Beyond the immediate case of contact tracing, our findings hold implications for the deployment and communicative framing of technology for public health and the public good, and inform the design of crisis response public health information systems.