During a crisis such as COVID-19, governments ask citizens to adopt various precautionary behaviours, such as using a voluntary proximity tracing application (PTA) for smartphones. However, the willingness of individual citizens to use such an app is crucial. Crisis decision theory can be used to better understand how individuals assess the severity of the crisis and how they decide whether or not to adopt the precautionary behaviour. We propose a research model to examine the direct influence of perceived crisis severity on intention to use the technology, as well as the indirect impact via PTAs’ benefits for citizens. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirm the two dimensions of the benefits, namely personal and societal benefits. We used PLS-MGA to evaluate our research model. The results confirm the influence of the perceived severity of COVID-19 on the intention to use the PTA, as well as the mediating effects of personal and societal benefits on this relationship. Our findings contribute to the technology adoption literature and showcase the use of crisis decision theory in the field of information systems.

在 COVID-19 等危机期间，政府要求公民采取各种预防措施，例如使用智能手机的自愿接近追踪应用程序 (PTA)。但是，公民个人是否愿意使用此类应用程序至关重要。危机决策理论可用于更好地理解个人如何评估危机的严重程度以及他们如何决定是否采取预防措施。我们提出了一个研究模型来检查感知危机严重程度对使用该技术的意愿的直接影响，以及通过PTA 为公民带来的好处的间接影响. 探索性和验证性因素分析证实了收益的两个维度，即个人收益和社会收益。我们使用 PLS-MGA 来评估我们的研究模型。结果证实了 COVID-19 的感知严重性对使用 PTA 的意图的影响，以及个人和社会利益对这种关系的中介作用。我们的发现有助于技术采用文献，并展示了危机决策理论在信息系统领域的应用。