Do You Have COVID-19?: How to Increase the Use of Diagnostic and Contact-Tracing Apps

Déborah Martínez Villarreal, Cristina Parilli, Ana María Rojas Méndez, Carlos Scartascini and Alberto Simpser

No 11121, IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank

Abstract: Diagnostic and contact tracing apps are an important weapon against contagion during a pandemic. We study how the content of the messages used to promote the apps influences adoption by conducting a survey experiment on approximately 23,000 Mexican adults. Respondents were randomly assigned to one of three different prompts, or a control condition, before stating their willingness to adopt a diagnostic app and contact-tracing app. The prompt emphasizing government efforts to ensure data privacy, which has been one of the most common strategies, reduced willingness to adopt the diagnostic app by about 4 percentage points and the contact tracing app by 3 percentage points. An effective app promotion policy must understand individuals' reservations and be wary of unintended reactions to naive reassurances.

Keywords: data privacy; COVID19; Priming; contact tracing apps; Diagnostic apps; Take-up (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D62 D90 D91 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:idb:brikps:11121

DOI: 10.18235/0003131

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