Statec, Luxembourg's national statistics office, has announced the results of the recent APPRECIATE survey in which in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic was addressed, to determine the acceptability of contact tracing applications for Luxembourg: the results were published yesterday, 30 November 2020, in a Working Paper entitled. "Determinants of Acceptability of Contact Tracing Apps for COVID-19: Initial Results from Luxembourg".
Respondents are in favour of apps that work across borders and in Europe, can be installed on a voluntary basis, and store data on the user's mobile device rather than a central server.
In short, 38% of respondents would definitely install a tracking application if it were made available. These results further indicate that an important motivator for installing the app is a sense of responsibility towards the community.
38% of respondents would definitely install a tracing app, and 34% would probably do so. In contrast, 11% of respondents would definitely not install such an app. As an example, the proportion of respondents that would definitely install the app was nearly 45% in the UK and France. In contrast, the estimated adoption rate is 34% in the UK, and 5% in France.
The main reasons for installing the app are feelings of responsibility towards the community (77%), and protecting family and friends (75%). Almost half of the respondents declare that a good reason for installing the app is that it may stop the epidemic. Among detractors, 43% fear greater surveillance. 40% worry about mandated self-isolation without a legitimate reason; and the same percentage fear that the app might be hacked.
56% of respondents are willing to install a decentralised app, whereas only 42% are in favor of a centralised system. This is lower than the corresponding 72% willingness to install a digital contact tracing app, which was reported when the question did not specify any technical details.
In Luxembourg, 34% of respondents would definitely install a European app, and 19% a global interoperable app, which functions across multiple countries.
65% of respondents prefer all data to be anonymised and made available to researchers to prepare for future epidemics. It is important to note that 34% of respondents would prefer to delete all data, probably due to privacy concerns.
The survey was conducted during the summer 2020, between 10 July and 10 August, on a sample of 1,300 residents. The final answer rate was about 60%, yielding a total of 730 completed questionnaires.
