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COVID-19 Apps as a Digital Intervention Policy: A Longitudinal Panel Data Analysis in South Korea

Many countries have developed COVID-19 tracking apps that help individuals trace and detect “people” who are likely to have come in contact with confirmed patients. However, their adoption rates remain low. This study, therefore, investigated South Koreans’ adoption and usage behaviors of COVID-19 a...

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Autor principal: Kim, Hwang
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier B.V. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8272623/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34301408
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2021.07.003
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author Kim, Hwang
author_facet Kim, Hwang
author_sort Kim, Hwang
collection PubMed
description Many countries have developed COVID-19 tracking apps that help individuals trace and detect “people” who are likely to have come in contact with confirmed patients. However, their adoption rates remain low. This study, therefore, investigated South Koreans’ adoption and usage behaviors of COVID-19 apps that detect the “place” where infectious people are found and alert people within 100m in dangerous zones. Our focus was on such apps’ impact on various facets of human life . Specifically, we analyzed mobile app usage data from 5,940 panelists at the start of the pandemic in South Korea and after the first major wave (January 6 to August 2, 2020). Findings showed that higher-income and more educated individuals were more likely to adopt COVID-19 apps early, and male and low-income people tended to use the COVID-19 tracking apps more frequently. In addition, this study offered empirical evidence of health protective behaviors, such as driving, shopping online, ordering food online, and avoiding travel and public transportation, and supported social- and religious-coping for people using COVID-19 apps. The implications are valuable for policy makers to implement a digital policy to motivate people to voluntarily engage in self-protective and coping behaviors through COVID-19 apps.
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spelling pubmed-82726232021-07-20 COVID-19 Apps as a Digital Intervention Policy: A Longitudinal Panel Data Analysis in South Korea Kim, Hwang Health Policy Article Many countries have developed COVID-19 tracking apps that help individuals trace and detect “people” who are likely to have come in contact with confirmed patients. However, their adoption rates remain low. This study, therefore, investigated South Koreans’ adoption and usage behaviors of COVID-19 apps that detect the “place” where infectious people are found and alert people within 100m in dangerous zones. Our focus was on such apps’ impact on various facets of human life . Specifically, we analyzed mobile app usage data from 5,940 panelists at the start of the pandemic in South Korea and after the first major wave (January 6 to August 2, 2020). Findings showed that higher-income and more educated individuals were more likely to adopt COVID-19 apps early, and male and low-income people tended to use the COVID-19 tracking apps more frequently. In addition, this study offered empirical evidence of health protective behaviors, such as driving, shopping online, ordering food online, and avoiding travel and public transportation, and supported social- and religious-coping for people using COVID-19 apps. The implications are valuable for policy makers to implement a digital policy to motivate people to voluntarily engage in self-protective and coping behaviors through COVID-19 apps. Elsevier B.V. 2021-11 2021-07-10 /pmc/articles/PMC8272623/ /pubmed/34301408 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2021.07.003 Text en © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Kim, Hwang
COVID-19 Apps as a Digital Intervention Policy: A Longitudinal Panel Data Analysis in South Korea
title COVID-19 Apps as a Digital Intervention Policy: A Longitudinal Panel Data Analysis in South Korea
title_full COVID-19 Apps as a Digital Intervention Policy: A Longitudinal Panel Data Analysis in South Korea
title_fullStr COVID-19 Apps as a Digital Intervention Policy: A Longitudinal Panel Data Analysis in South Korea
title_full_unstemmed COVID-19 Apps as a Digital Intervention Policy: A Longitudinal Panel Data Analysis in South Korea
title_short COVID-19 Apps as a Digital Intervention Policy: A Longitudinal Panel Data Analysis in South Korea
title_sort covid-19 apps as a digital intervention policy: a longitudinal panel data analysis in south korea
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8272623/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34301408
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2021.07.003
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