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Modeling Trust in COVID-19 Contact-Tracing Apps Using the Human-Computer Trust Scale: Online Survey Study

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused changes in technology use worldwide, both socially and economically. This pandemic crisis has brought additional measures such as contact-tracing apps (CTAs) to help fight against spread of the virus. Unfortunately, the low adoption rate of these apps aff...

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Autores principales: Sousa, Sonia, Kalju, Tiina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9202513/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35699973
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/33951
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author Sousa, Sonia
Kalju, Tiina
author_facet Sousa, Sonia
Kalju, Tiina
author_sort Sousa, Sonia
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description BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused changes in technology use worldwide, both socially and economically. This pandemic crisis has brought additional measures such as contact-tracing apps (CTAs) to help fight against spread of the virus. Unfortunately, the low adoption rate of these apps affected their success. There could be many reasons for the low adoption, including concerns of security and privacy, along with reported issues of trust in CTAs. Some concerns are related with how CTAs could be used as surveillance tools or their potential threats to privacy as they involve health data. For example, in Estonia, the CTA named HOIA had approximately 250,000 downloads in the middle of January 2021. However, in 2021, only 4.7% of the population used HOIA as a COVID-19 CTA. The reasons for the low adoption include lack of competency, and privacy and security concerns. This lower adoption and the lack of trustworthiness persist despite efforts of the European Union in building ethics and trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI)-based apps. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to understand how to measure trust in health technologies. Specifically, we assessed the usefulness of the Human-Computer Trust Scale (HCTS) to measure Estonians’ trust in the HOIA app and the causes for this lack of trust. METHODS: The main research question was: Can the HCTS be used to assess citizens’ perception of trust in health technologies? We established four hypotheses that were tested with a survey. We used a convenience sample for data collection, including sharing the questionnaire on social network sites and using the snowball method to reach all potential HOIA users in the Estonian population. RESULTS: Among the 78 respondents, 61 had downloaded the HOIA app with data on usage patterns. However, 20 of those who downloaded the app admitted that it was never opened despite most claiming to regularly use mobile apps. The main reasons included not understanding how it works, and privacy and security concerns. Significant correlations were found between participants’ trust in CTAs in general and their perceived trust in the HOIA app regarding three attributes: competency (P<.001), risk perception (P<.001), and reciprocity (P=.01). CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that trust in the HOIA app among Estonian residents did affect their predisposition to use the app. Participants did not generally believe that HOIA could help to control the spread of the virus. The result of this work is limited to HOIA and health apps that use similar contact-tracing methods. However, the findings can contribute to gaining a broader understanding and awareness of the need for designing trustworthy technologies. Moreover, this work can help to provide design recommendations that ensure trustworthiness in CTAs, and the ability of AI to use highly sensitive data and serve society.
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spelling pubmed-92025132022-06-17 Modeling Trust in COVID-19 Contact-Tracing Apps Using the Human-Computer Trust Scale: Online Survey Study Sousa, Sonia Kalju, Tiina JMIR Hum Factors Original Paper BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused changes in technology use worldwide, both socially and economically. This pandemic crisis has brought additional measures such as contact-tracing apps (CTAs) to help fight against spread of the virus. Unfortunately, the low adoption rate of these apps affected their success. There could be many reasons for the low adoption, including concerns of security and privacy, along with reported issues of trust in CTAs. Some concerns are related with how CTAs could be used as surveillance tools or their potential threats to privacy as they involve health data. For example, in Estonia, the CTA named HOIA had approximately 250,000 downloads in the middle of January 2021. However, in 2021, only 4.7% of the population used HOIA as a COVID-19 CTA. The reasons for the low adoption include lack of competency, and privacy and security concerns. This lower adoption and the lack of trustworthiness persist despite efforts of the European Union in building ethics and trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI)-based apps. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to understand how to measure trust in health technologies. Specifically, we assessed the usefulness of the Human-Computer Trust Scale (HCTS) to measure Estonians’ trust in the HOIA app and the causes for this lack of trust. METHODS: The main research question was: Can the HCTS be used to assess citizens’ perception of trust in health technologies? We established four hypotheses that were tested with a survey. We used a convenience sample for data collection, including sharing the questionnaire on social network sites and using the snowball method to reach all potential HOIA users in the Estonian population. RESULTS: Among the 78 respondents, 61 had downloaded the HOIA app with data on usage patterns. However, 20 of those who downloaded the app admitted that it was never opened despite most claiming to regularly use mobile apps. The main reasons included not understanding how it works, and privacy and security concerns. Significant correlations were found between participants’ trust in CTAs in general and their perceived trust in the HOIA app regarding three attributes: competency (P<.001), risk perception (P<.001), and reciprocity (P=.01). CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that trust in the HOIA app among Estonian residents did affect their predisposition to use the app. Participants did not generally believe that HOIA could help to control the spread of the virus. The result of this work is limited to HOIA and health apps that use similar contact-tracing methods. However, the findings can contribute to gaining a broader understanding and awareness of the need for designing trustworthy technologies. Moreover, this work can help to provide design recommendations that ensure trustworthiness in CTAs, and the ability of AI to use highly sensitive data and serve society. JMIR Publications 2022-06-13 /pmc/articles/PMC9202513/ /pubmed/35699973 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/33951 Text en ©Sonia Sousa, Tiina Kalju. Originally published in JMIR Human Factors (https://humanfactors.jmir.org), 13.06.2022. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Human Factors, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://humanfactors.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Sousa, Sonia
Kalju, Tiina
Modeling Trust in COVID-19 Contact-Tracing Apps Using the Human-Computer Trust Scale: Online Survey Study
title Modeling Trust in COVID-19 Contact-Tracing Apps Using the Human-Computer Trust Scale: Online Survey Study
title_full Modeling Trust in COVID-19 Contact-Tracing Apps Using the Human-Computer Trust Scale: Online Survey Study
title_fullStr Modeling Trust in COVID-19 Contact-Tracing Apps Using the Human-Computer Trust Scale: Online Survey Study
title_full_unstemmed Modeling Trust in COVID-19 Contact-Tracing Apps Using the Human-Computer Trust Scale: Online Survey Study
title_short Modeling Trust in COVID-19 Contact-Tracing Apps Using the Human-Computer Trust Scale: Online Survey Study
title_sort modeling trust in covid-19 contact-tracing apps using the human-computer trust scale: online survey study
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9202513/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35699973
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/33951
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