Young Adults View Smartphone Tracking Technologies for COVID-19 as Acceptable: The Case of Taiwan

Paul M. Garrett, YuWen Wang, Joshua P. White, Shulan Hsieh, Carol Strong, Yi-Chan Lee, Stephan Lewandowsky, Simon Dennis and Cheng-Ta Yang
Additional contact information
Paul M. Garrett: School of Psychology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3010, Australia
YuWen Wang: Department of Psychology, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan
Joshua P. White: School of Psychology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3010, Australia
Shulan Hsieh: Department of Psychology, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan
Carol Strong: Department of Public Health, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan
Yi-Chan Lee: Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Keelung 114, Taiwan
Stephan Lewandowsky: School of Psychology, The University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TU, UK
Simon Dennis: School of Psychology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3010, Australia
Cheng-Ta Yang: Department of Psychology, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 3, 1-18

Abstract: Taiwan has been successful in controlling the spread of SARS-CoV-2 during the COVID-19 pandemic; however, without a vaccine the threat of a second outbreak remains. Young adults who show few to no symptoms when infected have been identified in many countries as driving the virus’ spread through unidentifiable community transmission. Mobile tracking technologies register nearby contacts of a user and notifies them if one later tests positive to the virus, potentially solving this issue; however, the effectiveness of these technologies depends on their acceptance by the public. The current study assessed attitudes towards three tracking technologies (telecommunication network tracking, a government app, and Apple and Google’s Bluetooth exposure notification system) among four samples of young Taiwanese adults (aged 25 years or younger). Using Bayesian methods, we find high acceptance for all three tracking technologies (>75%), with acceptance for each technology surpassing 90% if additional privacy measures were included. We consider the policy implications of these results for Taiwan and similar cultures.

Keywords: COVID-19; tracking technologies; SARS-CoV-2; contact tracing; Taiwan; public health; health policy; privacy; privacy calculus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/3/1332/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/3/1332/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:3:p:1332-:d:491536

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().