Cultural Influences on Chinese Citizens' Adoption of Digital Contact Tracing: A Human Infrastructure Perspective

Digital contact tracing is an ICT approach for controlling public health crises. It identifies users’ risk of infection based on their healthcare and travel information. In the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries implemented digital contact tracing to contain the coronavirus outbreak. However, the adoption rates vary significantly across different countries. In this study, we investigate Chinese people’s adoption of digital contact tracing. We aim at finding the influence of Chinese culture on people’s attitudes and behaviors toward the technology. We interviewed 26 Chinese participants and used thematic analysis to interpret the data. Our findings showed that Chinese culture shaped citizens’ interactions with the digital contact tracing at multiple levels; driven by the culture, Chinese citizens accepted digital contact tracing and contributed to making digital contact tracing a socio-technical infrastructure of people’s daily lives. We also discuss such cultural influences with the growing literature of human infrastructure and crisis informatics.