The impact of source credibility and risk perception attitudes on Americans’ willingness to participate in contact tracing applications

ABSTRACT

Contact tracing has emerged as one tool to communicate infection risks with the public during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study uses source credibility and the risk perception attitude framework to interpret how Americans responded to contact tracing messages from a technology company, employer, physician, or state government. Survey participants (n = 245) were generally positive towards a contact tracing message regardless of source. Participants with high risk perceptions and low efficacy beliefs responded more strongly to appeals from their company and their physician while the low risk-low efficacy group found the state government appeal more compelling. The results suggest that several sources delivering the same health message could engage people with different risk perceptions and efficacy beliefs.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• contact tracing
• source credibility
• risk perception attitudes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Scholars are increasingly using services such as MTurk to generate survey data, especially during the pandemic. It is important to note that while this service offers convenience, it does have limitations. For a detailed review of the MTurk service and recommendations for its use we recommend a paper by Aguinis et al. (2021).