Us and Them (and It): Social Orientation, Privacy Concerns, and Expected Use of Pandemic-Tracking Apps in the United States

The deployment of technologies to track and mitigate the spread COVID-19 has surfaced tensions between individual autonomy and the collective good. These tensions reflect a conflict between two central concerns: (i) effectively controlling the spread of the pandemic and (ii) respecting individual rights, values, and freedoms. We explored these tensions in an online experiment (n = 389) designed to identify the influence of social orientation and communicative framing on perceptions and expected use of pandemic-tracking apps. We found that social orientation is a statistically significant predictor of app perception and expected use, with collectivist social orientation associated with higher levels and individualist social orientation with lower levels for both aspects. We found interactions between social orientation and communicative framing, as well as a connection between privacy concerns and expected duration of app use. Our findings hold important implications for the design, deployment, and adoption of technology for the public good. Shaping the post-pandemic social contract requires considering the long-term sociocultural impact of these technological solutions.