One-Time Decision or Continual Adjustment? A Longitudinal Study of the Within-Person Privacy Calculus among Users and Non-Users of a COVID-19 Contact Tracing App

Privacy behaviors are described to be situationally dynamic. While most privacy studies rely on cross-sectional analyses, it is important to investigate these dynamics within persons. In the present study, we will focus on the adoption of a COVID-19 contact tracing app as this was shown to be a privacy calculus-based decision and the pandemic situation unfolded as highly dynamical. The present longitudinal online panel study (N = 548) investigated users and non-users of this app at three points over a six-month period. Results support dynamical privacy calculus assumptions on the within-subject level: situational privacy concerns were negatively, and situationally perceived benefits and knowledge were positively associated with app adoption. Remarkably, a within-person interaction between concerns and benefits was found. Moreover, the trait need for privacy moderated the relation between perceived benefits and app adoption. Hence, privacy (calculus) decisions seem to be a dynamic and situational rather than a one-time decision.