One-sided Social Contract? Privacy Concerns in Pandemic Control

• In Event: Political Opinion During a Pandemic

Abstract

Information technologies play an unprecedented role in combating COVID-19 pandemic. Governments around the world use big data from wide-ranging sources including Bluetooth, cameras, smartphone applications, travel records, and social media for contact tracing and risk prediction. Although curbing the spread of coronavirus, large-scale collection of personal data raises escalating concerns for privacy. Many concerns about digital surveillance in the name of pandemic control invade individual liberty, resulting in the strengthening of authoritarian rules.
Each society sets a distinct boundary between the private domain and the public order. While democracies hold a strong commitment to individualism, authoritarian countries emphasize collective interest over individual freedom. As a result, countries across the globe take different approaches to the usage of ICT in battling coronavirus. Yet failing to protect privacy will damage public trust and result in poor compliance. Existing research focuses on privacy concerns in corporate settings in democracies, yet we lack systematic understandings of people’s privacy perceptions and concerns, especially in authoritarian regimes where personal data is widely collected by the government.
We employ the framework of the social contract to study the public’s concern for privacy in pandemic control. That is, the voluntary sharing of personal information is premised on a government-citizen mutual agreement, namely, personal information being collected for pandemic control and being handled properly. Meanwhile, governments are expected to disclose pandemic information in a timely and authentic manner. Infringement of this mutual agreement should lead to less compliance on information sharing. Accordingly, we developed three hypotheses. Hypothesis 1 states that governments’ approach to handling personal data impacts citizens’ concerns for privacy. Hypothesis 2 anticipates that citizens will be more willing to provide the government with health information than financial, social, and personal identifying information. Hypothesis 3 expects citizens’ willingness of disclosing personal information for pandemic control will be greater when perceiving greater governmental transparency and diminish when perceiving higher regulation of free speech.
We test these hypotheses by conducting a nation-wide online survey experiment in China in February 2021 (N = 5982). Participants were randomly exposed to three scenarios of data handling in the context of pandemic control. In the neutral condition, participants were told: “the usage of personal information (travel records, social contact, social media posts) are helpful in tracking the spread of coronavirus yet accidental data leak poses threat to privacy.” In treatment conditions, participants were told either “personal data were anonymized and well-protected” or “personal information was leaked and circulated widely on social media” in addition. We then ask participants the extent to which they are willing to share personal information with the government for purposes of pandemic control. We also ask a battery of questions regarding priorities of personal information, perception of the usage of data, and governmental evaluations, etc.
Our results show that, first and foremost, while accidental leakage of personal data significantly decreased people’s willingness to share personal information with governments, surprisingly, data protection treatment did not significantly increase people’s willingness of information-sharing as we would expect. Secondly, people show clear preferences for sharing different types of personal data. Personal health conditions and travel records, which are most relevant to pandemic control, are most likely to be shared. Information about personal relationships and real-time locations are less likely to be shared and regarded as sensitive personal information. People are most unwilling to share information about their social contact, financial situations, and personal identifier information such as phone number and address. Furthermore, we find that the willingness of information sharing is positively associated with perceptions of governmental transparency. Perceived surveillance of speech, contrarily, is negatively associated with the willingness of information sharing. The more one trusts technology and governments, the more one is likely to share personal information for pandemic control. Concerns for privacy are particularly pronounced for the well-educated.
Taken together, our research shows that data leakage discourages citizens’ sharing of personal data more than the encouraging effect of data protection. Public concerns about privacy boil down to two dimensions (social vs. personal). Findings suggest that the collection of personal data should be handled carefully and should take into types, purposes, and amount of necessity into account. The usage of personal data on pandemic control requires mutual agreement on data usage and privacy protection.

Authors

• Kaiping Zhang, Tsinghua University

• Tianguang Meng, Tsinghua University