Adoption of contact tracing app during pandemic: Users’ resistance behavior

Abstract

The study investigates the key issues influencing different barriers resulting in user resistance toward adopting contact tracing smartphone apps launched to track COVID-19 infections. Indian users’ experiences regarding the Aarogya Setu app for preventing the spread of COVID-19 were examined in two phases. In Phase I, online users’ comments available at the Google Play Store were qualitatively analyzed using open and axial coding. These codes were then used to create an implication matrix and hierarchical value maps to illustrate and interpret the relationships between issues, barriers, and user behavior. In Phase II, a supplementary empirical study, data was collected from users and non-users of the app through semi-structured telephone interviews and then qualitatively analyzed. By drawing on innovation resistance theory, the current study mapped a set of adoption barriers with three types of user resistance, i.e., postponement, opposition, and rejection. Rejection emerged as the most prominent consumer resistance behavior; usage barriers, functional risk, and value barriers related to the app's usage were the key drivers of this behavior. Postponement was the second most observed consumer resistance behavior. If usage barriers, functional risk, and value barriers of the app resulted in functional barriers toward adoption of the app, then image barrier was the key reason behind the psychological barrier. Administrators and developers of future interventions need to be conscious of usage barriers, functional risks, and value barriers related to the app's usage through stakeholder engagement to secure broader and faster adoption of such apps to improve health information systems.