Howell Bronwyn E, Potgieter Petrus H
School of Management, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Institute for Technology and Network Economics, United States.
Telecomm Policy. 2022 Sep;46(8):102386. doi: 10.1016/j.telpol.2022.102386. Epub 2022 May 24.
Contact tracing has been a central pillar of the nonpharmaceutical health system response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Countries around the world have devoted unprecedented levels of resources to build up their testing and tracing capabilities, including the development and deployment of smartphone-based applications. Yet despite these nontrivial investments, the body of academic literature evaluating the effects of the smartphone-based applications remains scant and many apps have not delivered the promised benefits (Bano et al. 2021). We contribute to this body of empirical evidence by analysing data on uptake and usage of New Zealand's QR code-based application New Zealand COVID Tracer (NZCT). Our paper uses descriptive statistics and regression analysis to focus on the likelihood of an individual registering to use the application, the likelihood that a registered user will use the application to scan QR codes, and the extent of that usage, measured as the number of codes scanned daily. In addition, we take advantage of the "natural experiment" offered by the decision in August 2021 following the establishment of endemic community transmission of COVID-19 to make use of the application mandatory from 7 September 2021 to assess the effect of this policy on usage. We find that despite increasing numbers of individuals downloading the application over time, the number of active devices and scanning activity was very low, even when community outbreaks occurred (i.e. actual infection risk was higher). Mandating use (separate and distinct from increased infection risk) led to an increase in the number of scans in total via an increase in the number of active devices only.
接触者追踪一直是非药物卫生系统应对新冠疫情的核心支柱。世界各国投入了前所未有的资源来增强其检测和追踪能力，包括开发和部署基于智能手机的应用程序。然而，尽管有这些重大投资，但评估基于智能手机应用程序效果的学术文献仍然很少，而且许多应用程序并未带来承诺的好处（巴诺等人，2021年）。我们通过分析新西兰基于二维码的应用程序“新西兰新冠追踪器”（NZCT）的使用和采用数据，为这一实证证据做出了贡献。我们的论文使用描述性统计和回归分析，重点关注个人注册使用该应用程序的可能性、注册用户使用该应用程序扫描二维码的可能性，以及以每日扫描码数量衡量的使用程度。此外，我们利用2021年8月在新冠疫情出现社区地方性传播后做出的决定所提供的“自然实验”，自2021年9月7日起强制使用该应用程序，以评估这一政策对使用情况的影响。我们发现，尽管随着时间推移下载该应用程序的人数不断增加，但即使在社区爆发疫情（即实际感染风险较高）时，活跃设备数量和扫描活动也非常低。强制使用（与感染风险增加无关）仅通过增加活跃设备数量，导致扫描总数增加。
