Integrating EPPM with authoritarianism to predict people’s intention to accept digital tracing surveillance : an empirical study during the COVID-19 pandemic in Asia

As digital tracing surveillance has become an important tool to improve the efficiency of tracing close contacts and thus controlling the outbreak during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is worth exploring what psychological and cultural factors influence people's intention to accept surveillance. Based on a survey in six regions in Asia, we aim to integrate the EPPM model with authoritarianism to predict people's intention to accept digital tracing in this study. The data reveals that both perceived threat and efficacy have independent and positive main effects on people's intention, and the interaction effect between perceived risk and perceived efficacy is additive. In this study, besides people with high perceived threat and high perceived efficacy, those with high perceived threat and low perceived efficacy, or low perceived threat and high perceived efficacy also have pretty high intention to accept surveillance. The pattern exists in people with no matter high authoritarianism or low authoritarianism. These findings contribute to theoretical discussion on government surveillance and risk perception, and offer empirical evidence to explore the possibility of promoting privacy-friendly big data governance techniques.