One app to trace them all? Examining app specifications for mass acceptance of contact-tracing apps
Authors: Trang, Simon; Trenz, Manuel; Weiger, Welf H.; Tarafdar, Monideepa; Cheung, Christy M.K.
Journal: European Journal of Information Systems (2020)
DOI: 10.1080/0960085x.2020.1784046
The current COVID-19 crisis has seen governments worldwide mobilising to develop and implement contact-tracing apps as an integral part of their lockdown exit strategies. The challenge facing policy makers is that tracing can only be efective if the majority of the population uses the one app developed; its specifications must therefore be carefully considered. We theorise on tracing apps and mass acceptance and conduct a full-factorial experiment to investigate how app installation intention is influenced by diferent app specifications based on three benefit appeals, two privacy designs, and two convenience designs. By applying quantile regression, we not only estimate the general efect of these app specifications but also uncover how their influence difers among citizens with diferent propensities for acceptance (i.e. critics, undecided, advocates) – a crucial insight for succeeding with mass acceptance. This study contributes to research in three ways: we theorise how mass acceptance difers from established app acceptance, we provide a fine-grained approach to investigating the app specifications salient for mass acceptance, and we reveal contextualised insights specific to tra…