Leveraging the Digital Tracing Alert in Virus Fight: The Impact of COVID-19 Cell Broadcast on Population Movement

Abstract

Digital tracing alerts (DTAs) have emerged as effective means to share information with agility in responding to disaster outbreaks. Governments are able to instantaneously coordinate the available information to provide information related to the disaster and promote preventive actions. However, despite the opportunities granted by these innovative technologies in managing disasters, privacy concerns can arise in regard to how much of individuals’ private information should be collected and disclosed. With these considerations, we examine the extent to which instant digital tracing alerts and the information included in the alerts affect people’s actions toward disaster management in the context of South Korea. Our results show that collecting and disclosing detailed private information is unnecessary and may instead diminish the effects of DTAs. The effect of digital alerts being more pronounced among young and male individuals and in business-centric areas. Furthermore, because the effectiveness of DTAs decreases with the cumulative number of DTAs received, governments should send alerts that include more urgent information that is directly related to the risk posed by a disaster. Our results provide policymakers and law enforcement with novel insights into whether and how the usage of information technology can facilitate disaster management and to what extent they should collect and expose private information to effectively safeguards public health and safety during a crisis. The fast and comprehensive implementation of DTAs in South Korea in response to the global outbreak offers other countries learning opportunities with respect to successful collaboration among parties involved in the development and design of DTA-related infrastructure and education. We emphasize that collaboration among central policymakers, local/municipal districts, telecommunications companies, and healthcare centers is essential to establishing an innovative IT-driven disaster management infrastructure and mechanisms that help inform citizens in taking desired actions in an emergency or disastrous events.