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Review
. 2022 Jun:24:100278.
doi: 10.1016/j.smhl.2022.100278. Epub 2022 Feb 25.

Factors impacting the use of the NZ COVID Tracer application in New Zealand"

Zarqa Shaheen Ali  1 , Hoang Dang  1
Affiliations
Review

Factors impacting the use of the NZ COVID Tracer application in New Zealand"

Zarqa Shaheen Ali et al. Smart Health (Amst). 2022 Jun.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly created devastating damage on world economics and public health. This project identifies key concerns of end-users toward the NZ COVID-19 contact tracing app in New Zealand. The key research objective in this study is to understand the usage behaviour towards the mobile application NZ COVID-19 Tracer used for contact tracing purposes. Secondly, the study explores the reasons for using the contact tracing app. Thirdly, it examines the relationship between usage behaviour of the NZ-COVID Tracer app with age, the user's perceived health, attitude towards COVID-19, whether family or friends are infected by COVID-19, trust in maintaining social distancing, trust in data privacy, smartphone usage and the media's role in motivating people to use this app. Consequently, understanding these issues and challenges could help improve the usage of this contact tracing app, which in turn would contribute to better public health outcomes in disease management and containment. Findings of the study reveals that age, smartphone usage behaviour, and trust in privacy data protection from the app provider has a statistically significant relationship on usage behaviour of the NZ COVID Tracer app. Self-perceived health status and attitudes towards the COVID-19 pandemic did not have a significant relationship on NZ COVID Tracer app usage behaviour. While social media, such as Facebook, has been shown to be the most popular source of news for COVID-19 among New Zealanders, it is television that acted as a motivational tool to encourage people to use the contact tracing mobile application and to practice other measures to help protect against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: COVID Tracer app. data privacy; New Zealand; Perceived usefulness; Trust.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Age groups of survey respondents.
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Gender of the respondents.
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Ethnic groups of respondents.
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Smartphone usage among respondents.
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Employment status of the respondents.
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Residing areas of survey respondents.
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NZ COVID Tracer app installation status by respondents.
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NZ COVID Tracer app usage behaviour.
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Reasons to use NZ COVID Tracer app.
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Contact tracing app features.
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App features that need improvements.
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User's trust in data privacy protection.
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User's support for mandatory use of NZ COVID Tracer apps.
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User's trust about social distancing practice.
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Main sources of news for COVID-19.
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Media sources to motivate the use of NZ COVID Tracer app.
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User's perceived health status.
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User's current health issues.
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User's attitudes towards COVID-19.
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User's acquaintances of someone infected with COVID-19.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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