Introduction
The World Health Organization declared the spread of COVID-19 pandemic a global public health emergency. The WHO’s 13
th Coronavirus Report, released that excess of true and false information both online and offline, which makes it difficult for citizens to find trusted sources and reliable guidance when needed. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the infodemic, even though some misinformation may just be confusing, many false and misleading claims such as those about fake or questionable cures, or incorrect recommendations about prevention or public behavior can be harmful to life and can exacerbate the outbreak [
1]. Understanding governmental pandemic prevention measures is a critical predictor of public risk perception [
2], particularly should protect the elderly [
3]. Public risk perception plays an important role in the response to health emergencies, public health policies, affecting risk management and risk communication strategies [
4], and in the adoption of these actions, people’s feelings, and their daily habits [
5]. However, the change in daily habits, the limitation of social life and the risk of COVID-19 could have an impact on the well-being of individuals [
6].
Individuals communicate with others have cyber-based and place-based information sources, who with higher levels of perceived cyber-based information overload have greater stress, poorer health, and less time devoted to contemplative activities [
7]. During the outbreak of infection diseases, particularly when traditional media do not provide relevant, timely information for the public, less credible information from Public Health Officials [
8], and tele education of family health ambassadors [
9] and individuals use social media as an effective tool and immediate information source for communicating relevant information with others [
10]. As COVID-19 spreads rapidly, public fear of the unknown risks of the pandemic and the relative authority of official social media became an essential public messenger and mode to obtain and disseminate pandemic information.
Accordingly, the present research was designed to contribute to the prior research with the media use motivations [
11‐
13], risk perception [
14,
15], and the intention to adopt information [
16]. Studies found that personal experience and trust in expert authorities have the greatest impact on risk perception between personal experience and ready to take protective actions, a risk perception paradox exists in that it is assumed that high risk perception will lead to personal preparedness and, in the next step, to risk mitigation behavior [
17], and can result in heavy losses to individuals and society. This study was designed to contribute to the existing research on how official social media information quality (IQ) and risk perception (RP) affect preventive behavior (PB) and continued use behavior (CB) of official social media during the COVID-19 outbreak. Specially, this study investigates three issues: (1) Is there “risk perception paradox” in the context of COVID-19 pandemic? (2) How QI affects PB and CB? (3) Is there difference in public behavior in different regions, genders, ages and annual household income? The answer to these questions will provide empirical evidence for future risk governance and communication, improving public intention to act against the pandemic, and the information management ability of official social media operation institutions.
Literature review and research hypotheses
The protective action decision-making fuses to promote risk communication activities in a better way. In this process, the degree of risk exposure, the quality of risk information, the perception of protection activities, and stakeholders’ perceptions, which affect public decision-making on protective actions [
18,
19]. Social media is “a double-edged sword”, if used appropriately, can increase the public risk perception through two self-related emotions (fear and anger), and significantly enhance their preventive behaviors [
20]. In addition, if used excessively, or misinformation disseminated on the social media, risk perception can be unnecessarily exaggerated through the lens of social media [
21] [
22].
According to the Social Amplification of Risk Framework, the social media can function as a “social amplification station’ to form the public risk perception [
23]. The “vertical” official information source and formal social interaction can influence public risk perception [
24]. There is significant uncertainty in the public risk perception of infectious disease outbreaks [
25]. Appropriate preventative or individual avoidance behaviors rely on risk perceptions [
26]. The structure of the health belief model predicted public’s perceived stress and risk during COVID-19 [
27,
28].
The expression and reception of infectious disease risk information on social networking sites can affect public preventative behaviors [
10]. The input of limited data and the illusion of risk control lead to the cognitive bias of individuals, which leads to the difference in the degree of risk cognition [
29]. Protection awareness, stakeholders, and risk awareness can positively affect individuals to take protective measures, and risk perception plays a partially mediating role [
30]. Faced with the rapid spread of COVID-19 and a crisis of prevention and control, official social media at all levels released different types of pandemic information. Some channels released professional or scientific information, associated dangers of COVID-19 to reduce the panic. Some channels published specific protective measures and touching stories of local government at all levels to let the public know and understand the herculean efforts made by governments and medical workers. Some channels released the itinerary of confirmed cases and asked close contacts of those confirmed to be under quarantine and medically observed to ensure their health and safety and prevent the spread of COVID-19. In this way, the quality of information released by official social media will affect public intention to take preventive actions and continued use of official social media. Based on these factors, I proposed the following hypotheses:
News media exposure correlates positively with the cognitive dimensions of risk characteristics [
31]. The news information that causes fear correlates positively with the risk perception of individuals. Fear-inducing news information leads to people talking about risk directly or indirectly through perceived risk. Risk perception appears to be more closely related to the intention to talk about risk at the individual level than at the social level [
32]. Risk perception can be influenced by the sensationalistic headline, emotional processing (evaluation of the consequences), and information quality than a logical argument [
33,
34]. The systematic analysis and release of risk information brought by COVID-19 through official social media can serve as a public risk alert and education. The official social media information quality on how to prevent the pandemic affects public risk perception of the pandemic. I proposed the following hypothesis based on this concept:
Risk perception and behavior intention
When the available risk information is not enough to make them take preventive behavior, people will search for health information to solve the uncertainty of risk [
18]. Perceived risk to disaster also led the public to seek and process information to alleviate anxiety, and risk perception towards emergencies can influence their subsequent mitigation intentions and actions [
35]. Risk perception is the most direct public psychological response to the pandemic, and it shows regional differences and demographic characteristics, and risk perception is affected by information quality. Furthermore, it affects social and economic psychology, mental health, and public behavioral intention. Risk perception has a significant positive impact on Europeans’ flood control behaviors, and women have a higher level of risk perception [
36]. Risk perceptions were important drivers for the acceptance of the government’s implemented measures to control COVID-19 and for more preventive behavior (i.e., keep social distance and more hygienic behavior) [
37].
Although risk perception plays a mediating or social amplifying role between personal experience and intention to take preventive actions, there is still a risk perception paradox phenomenon that individuals with high-risk perception still do not take preventive action. In the context of COVID-19, most of the public strictly abides by the pandemic prevention and control regulations. Still, some people remain who perceive a high degree of risk and have the mindset that “they cannot be infected.” Fortunately, they are a minority group. In other words, the higher level of risk perception, the stronger the public intention to take positive preventative action. The higher the public's risk perception, the more frequently they use official media to obtain authoritative pandemic information. Based on this assumption, I proposed the following hypotheses:
Spatial distance will affect public sensitivity to risk perception, increased proximity increases risk perception [
38]. When faced with risk events, women have a higher level of risk perception than men, and the age affects individual risk experience and behavior intention [
39]. The potential harm of misinformation could be more substantial for low-income countries than high-income countries [
40], where low health literacy levels, poor health infrastructure and poor resource settings exist [
41].
-
H4a: There is significant difference in PB with different risk levels.
-
H4b: There is significant difference in CB with different risk levels.
-
H5a: There is significant difference in PB between males and females.
-
H5b: There is significant difference in CB between males and females.
-
H6a: There is significant difference in PB at different ages.
-
H6b: There is significant difference in CB at different ages.
-
H7a: There is significant difference in PB with different annual household incomes.
-
H7b: There is significant difference in CB with different annual household incomes.
Discussion
This paper contributes to our knowledge of how the official social media information affects preventive and continued use behavior during the global pandemic of the COVID-19. Recent research has mainly devoted efforts to explain the risk perception of pandemic [
2,
14,
26,
30,
31,
58], whereas relative few studies have explored how information of official social media influenced public’s behavior through the risk perception during COVID-19. However, information quality online, which can impact the citizens’ recognition and risk perception of pandemic around the world, and provide insight into how to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and the other future pandemics [
59,
60], but official social media has received little attention.
The IQ has a high significant direct and indirect impacts on the PB through RP, and the IQ has a direct impact on CB. RP has a high significant direct impact on public behavior, which has been approved in previous studies on COVID-19 [
61]. Currently, due to the rapid growth of social media, coupled with the repeated COVID-19 outbreak, the duration is lengthier, reducing the level of public risk perception of the pandemic, leading to paralysis by the public on pandemic preventive ideas [
17]. It indicated that media was the one of many factors that affected public’s risk perception, but the judgment of individual risk perception depended on the information quality from personal experience. The authority, accessibility, comprehensive, timeless, usefulness of information quality, as well as the characteristics of information source and channels (e.g., official social media) positively affected the public’s risk perception. The COVID-19 had the characteristics of serious threat and wide scope of influence, and official social media reported generally respond objectively to the pandemic situation and progress in pandemic prevention and control, and the risk of COVID-19 was objective. When the magnitude of pandemic information is overwhelming in receiving and processing, automatic filtering may occur, which will harm public health and pandemic prevention. From this perspective, the higher official media information quality of COVID-19 is expected to increase the public RP.
This paper found that in the first wave of COVID-19, the public’s risk perception was not only significant influenced by the official social media information quality, but also had a high significant positive impact on the preventive behavior, that is, the risk perception had a significant mediating impact on the relationship between official social media and preventive behavior. The implication is that information managers in official social media and public health emergencies need to observe changes in people’s risk perception in real time. Too high or too low risk perception is not conducive to pandemic prevention and control, and indirectly affects information flow through reasonable supply of media information.
In the case of widespread public health emergencies such as the COVID-19, about which individuals have no enough and authoritative information, they tend to trust in official social media and governments [
62]. Lower quality messages would not meet individuals’ needs in the risk and make people turn elsewhere [
63]. The determinants of risk perception and behaviors are media information features and their processing by the receivers [
64]. This means that official social media should need to constantly improve the quality of pandemic information.
First, the operation departments of official social media should analyze the time characteristics and critical dimensions of public attention to the COVID-19 pandemic based on the science and evidence. Combining with the priority and urgency of pandemic information, and must reach public and enable them to make informed decisions on how to protect themselves and their communities in a health emergency [
65], to avoid the public miss essential data due to emotional fatigue and information overload. Additionally, public feedback mechanisms should be implemented to support interactive communication and promptly clarify rumors related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, Coordinated work and partnering with a variety of stakeholders, is required to ensure the availability of information via informal social media [
1]. Third, the local governments and operations department of official social media should reach out to key communities to ensure their concerns and information needs are understood. Meanwhile, information sources and strategic partnerships should be established across all sectors, including but not limited to official social media, and public health authorities, academia, technology sectors, the food and agricultural sector, health care, hospital and medical professional associations. On the other hand, risk perception can be seen as an emotional response, and individuals show higher likelihood to carry out behaviors in the situation of stronger emotions, with higher quality of the warning information [
66]. The perceived information quality, information sufficiency and emotions (perceived threat) are determinants of the behaviors [
67]. As it is found, judging the public information preference in time and the changing trend of risk perception and behavior, and adjust the release of information based on timeliness, would improve public intention to act against COVID-19 and continued use of official social media.
This study showed that the public behavior was also significant influenced by demographic characteristics, such as gender, age, and annual income. According to pandemic risk degree, user’s features, including age, gender differences and income differences, the public behavior were also different. For example, in many risk regions, risk communication activities were mainly targeted at men, who may experience less fear than women, and may decide to take fewer or no preventive measures. It is recommended that risk communication involve more women as this may increase the likelihood of preventive actions. Official social media should publish different and precise pandemic information, and warrant a pre-emptive strategy for busting misinformation and indicate a higher demand for localized fact checks in these countries and a public belief, especially in low-income countries [
40]. It will improve users’ interest and focus on pandemic information, and avoid undue panic and excessive health concerns. Improving digital literacy and increasing fact-checking capacities, supporting and facilitating people to think more critically about the relationship between information and their health is one potentially powerful way of intervening in and reshaping cultural norms around how I consume information and how I understand its impacts on our lives [
68].
This study has some limitations. In the context of COVID-19, there are complex influencing factors on public behavior. Although I explored the influence relationship and formation mechanism of official social media information quality on public behavior, I did not consider the interactions between official social media and the public. Future research could use mining tools to conduct in-depth analysis and further probe the influence mechanism of public comments on pandemic information content, the public and governmental interactive content on public behavior, to improve pandemic prevention behavior and continued use of official social media.
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