Extending the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology for COVID-19 Contact Tracing Application by Malaysian Users

Abstract

The Malaysian government has mobilized its strength to confront the current COVID-19 pandemic and has sought to develop and implement a digital contact tracking application, making it an integral part of the exit strategy from the lockdown. These applications record which users have been near one another. When a user is confirmed with COVID-19, app users who have recently been near this person are notified. The effectiveness of these applications is determined by the users’ willingness to install and use them. Therefore, this research aims at identifying the factors that would stimulate or slow down the adoption of a contact-tracing app. It proposes solutions to mitigate the impact of the factors affecting the user’s acceptance of COVID-19 Digital Contact Tracing Apps. A quantitative approach was followed in this research, where an electronic survey was spread in Malaysia, for the objective of data collection, considering the previous discussion of the results. Then, using PLS-SEM, the collected data were analyzed statistically. The findings of this study indicate that the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) factors (Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy, Social Influence, Facilities Condition) were significant predictors of MySejahtera application adoption among citizens in Malaysia. On the other hand, the factors of app-related privacy concern were found to be insignificant for MySejahtera application adoption.