Discrimination and technology-based disease control.

OBJECTIVES

Experiences of ethnic discrimination may undermine compliance with public mitigation policies for disease control, such as Digital Contact Tracing (DCT), through increasing concerns, undermining trust and decreasing solidarity.

METHODS

Addressing this issue, we collected a web-based quota sample of the German population (N = 700) in September 2020 focusing on public health strategies aimed to curb the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

RESULTS

Using a series of mediation models employing structural equation modelling we indeed find evidence that discrimination experiences, mediated via privacy concerns and trust in government, negatively predict DCT support and DCT opt-in. Our data, however, do not support the mediating role of solidarity. Additionally, we find that among individuals who were not using DCT, discrimination experiences were negatively associated with people's willingness to participate in DCT in the future. This relationship was mediated by concerns that the government might use DCT against one's ethnic group.

CONCLUSION

Experiences of ethnic discrimination can decrease the effectiveness of health policies including respondent-driven tools like DCT, as their support depends strongly on the trust in government. Current and future policies should take ethnic minority concerns into account in order to improve their widespread acceptance.