Government responsiveness and public acceptance of big-data technology in urban governance: Evidence from China during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 global pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges to nations and cities worldwide. Governments have adopted Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to rapidly control the spread of a novel coronavirus. As an innovative but controversial ICT-based tool, health QR code plays a vital role by assisting rapid contact tracing. Yet, whether and how citizens accept this policy tool remains an unknown theoretical and empirical question. In this paper, we study the sources that determine citizens' acceptance of health QR code in city governance. Based on a nation-wide online survey covering 28 major provincial-capital cities in China, we find that individual experiences and political identities affect citizens' acceptance of QR code. Even though public opinion regarding this issue is diverse, the government's responses to citizens' requests play a critical role in enhancing their acceptance of using QR code both in the current and future stages. Specifically, as the citizens perceive a higher level of city government responsiveness, they are less worried about privacy leaks and more likely to perceive the effectiveness of health QR code in improving public health, thus resulting in a higher acceptance. The results offer broad policy implications for smart cities and urban governance.

COVID-19: a challenge for smart cities in the decalogue of public health

“…El marco multidimensional de la automatización en las ciudades inteligentes permite el combate con múltiples medidas del COVID-19 en diferentes frentes, entre los que pueden señalarse la monitorización del distanciamiento social, el empleo de mascarillas, el seguimiento de contactos, la predicción de inmunogenicidad en los vacunados contra el coronavirus, en la caracterización del triaje, en la predicción de gravedad y mortalidad, incluso en el descubrimiento de medicamentos y en la óptima asignación de recursos, dado que en estas ciudades muchas de las tecnologías (sensores inalámbricos, banda ancha y servicios en las nubes) están conectadas en estructuras inteligentes como salud, educación, gobernanza, infraestructura, movilidad y seguridad (Frost, 2013;Absalom et al, 2021;García-Vicuña et al, 2022;Guo et al, 2022).…”

“…La COVID-19 se ve afectada por factores ambientales como la deforestación, el calentamiento global y la contaminación atmosférica. Todos los aspectos mostrados traen consigo la necesidad de plantearse conceptos de salud urbana, ya ampliamente debatidas, centradas en la tecnología en plena consideración de la planificación y diseño de comunidades sostenibles e inteligentes (Capolongo et al, 2020;Trinca, 2020;Hassankhani, 2021;Ali et al, 2021;Hassan et al, 2021;Ferraz, 2022;Guo et al, 2022).…”

The impact of environmental risk and platform trust on satisfaction with health qr code use

“…As a result, it enables Chinese city governments to quickly identify and isolate potentially infected individuals. At the same time, the health code completes the replacement of paper-based materials and greatly facilitates public mobility across provinces and access to various public places, thus playing a key role in China's economic and social recovery ( 4 ). The “most important weapon” in China's “great achievement” of successfully reopening its economy and society without a major backlash was the health code system ( 5 ).…”

“…From a technical perspective, health codes can efficiently and conveniently collect, store, and share case data, and accurately identify who the close contacts are. However, health codes may at the same time bring harm to the public's personal privacy and negatively affect public data security ( 4 , 6 , 7 ). At the same time, because health codes require certain technical conditions and capabilities to use, there are certain problems for groups such as the elderly to use health codes ( 8 ).…”

“…Among the existing studies on health codes, many articles focus on policy or technical issues in the government emergency governance dimension, but rarely analyze the public's awareness and use of health codes from their perspective. Although some articles have analyzed the impact of government response on public acceptance from the perspective of urban governance, and concluded that government response to public demands can effectively enhance public acceptance of health codes now and in the future ( 4 ). However, few articles really analyze the influence of the public's satisfaction with health code use from individual dimensions such as their living environment, usage, and cognitive ability.…”