Data Protection: Trust to Government and Willingness to Provide Information

Erne Suzila Kassim, Muhammad Shafiq Shazwan Bin Abdul Halim, Safwan Kamal, Muhammad Kamallul Hayat Mohd Banuri · 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen many countries took their best measures to prevent the spread of the virus. Hence, the use of contact tracing apps to track infection and help to diagnose symptoms has become common. However, digital innovation for public health management has posed some challenges to the government and the society. There are trade-offs between the benefits of health protection and the risks of loss of data privacy. Therefore, the study aims to examine what data protection factors will predict users' trust to the government, and whether the trust will impact on how the users provide data to COVID-19 contact tracing apps. A self-administered survey was conducted, and 497 data was obtained. Analysis on structural equation modeling was done by using SmartPLS. The findings show trust to government is determined by perception of the users on ethics of data collection, regulation by the government, data protection policy, and information disclosure prevalence. Trust affects willingness to provide information in a different manner. The willingness to provide information is determined by cognitive trust. But affective trust increases people's willingness for falsification. The research contributes to data privacy field by demonstrating how different forms of trust to government during the pandemic influence cooperative behavior, and the identification of clear distinction of trust antecedents, which will be useful for the redesign of government relationship with the people.

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