How Mass surveillance Crowds Out Installations of COVID-19 Contact Tracing Applications

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries have developed contact-tracing technologies to curb the spread of the disease by locating and isolating people who have been in contact with coronavirus carriers. Subsequently, understanding why people install and use contact tracing applications is becoming central to their effectiveness and impact. This paper analyzes how involuntary systems can crowd out voluntary participation in data collection systems. To do so, we analyze the simultaneous deployment of two contact-tracing technologies in Israel: centralized mass surveillance technologies and a voluntary contact-tracing mobile app. Based on a representative survey of Israelis (n=519), our findings show that positive attitudes toward mass surveillance were related to a reduced likelihood of installing contact tracing apps and an increased likelihood of uninstalling them. These results also hold when controlling for privacy concerns, attitudes toward the app, trust in authorities, and demographic properties. We discuss the impact of these findings on the overall effectiveness of COVID-19 contact tracing and suggest a framework for thinking about crowding out effects in systems that combine involuntary surveillance and voluntary participation.