COVID-19 Infection Tracing with Mobile Apps: Acceptance and Privacy Concerns

In the unique context of an ongoing pandemic, this study aims to investigate the acceptance of mobile contact tracing applications (CTA) provided by the German government. Herein, the study develops and validates a research model based on established acceptance, privacy-, and health-related theories, which explains 80% of the variance of the intention to use CTA. The results of the structural equation model (n=656) indicate performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, trust, privacy concerns, and anxiety to be relevant drivers of the intention to use CTA. This research contributes to theory and practical application by remarkable results, including the implementation of a collective-oriented task as an app performance, and identifying the effect of trust to be mediated via privacy concerns. Thereby, we offer valuable insights for research and institutions in charge of distributing the app