Author(s): Elizabeth Devasia and Paarijat Joshi
Mobile health apps have been gaining popularity over the last few years and during the Covid 19 pandemic, several countries across the globe launched their own contact tracing mobile apps in an attempt to monitor the spread of the pandemic. Some of the studies on the adoption of the Covid contact tracing apps revealed concerns about the functioning of the app and data security. The Indian government also launched their own contact tracing app branded as the Aarogya Setu app. Based largely on the Technology Adoption Model, this paper has proposed a conceptual model where perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, trust, necessity of using the app and social influence of using the app were modelled as predictors of the overall perception of the app. The overall perception towards the Aarogya Setu app, was considered an important measure towards adoption of the app and hence was used a measure of the perception towards this brand. For this study, data was collected from users of the app on their mobile phones. SEM analysis was used to test the relationship between perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, trust, and necessity of using the app, social influence and security of using the app with overall perception. The results of this study show that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, trust and the app as a necessity positively influenced the overall perception of the app. However, based on the analysis of the questions on the awareness of the app, it was found that users were not aware of many of the features or the prerequisites for the functioning of the app. Hence, it can be concluded from this study that there is a need to focus on communicating the usefulness, ease of use, trustworthiness and the necessity of the App to create a better overall perception and adoption.