Factors Affecting Public Adoption of COVID-19 Prevention and Treatment Information During an Infodemic: Cross-sectional Survey Study

Abstract

Background With the spread of COVID-19, an infodemic is also emerging. In public health emergencies, the use of information to enable disease prevention and treatment is incredibly important. Although both the information adoption model (IAM) and health belief model (HBM) have their own merits, they only focus on information or public influence factors, respectively, to explain the public’s intention to adopt online prevention and treatment information. Objective The aim of this study was to fill this gap by using a combination of the IAM and the HBM as the framework for exploring the influencing factors and paths in public health events that affect the public’s adoption of online health information and health behaviors, focusing on both objective and subjective factors. Methods We carried out an online survey to collect responses from participants in China (N=501). Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate items, and confirmatory factor analysis was used to calculate construct reliability and validity. The goodness of fit of the model and mediation effects were analyzed. Results The overall fitness indices for the model developed in this study indicated an acceptable fit. Adoption intention was predicted by information characteristics (β=.266, P<.001) and perceived usefulness (β=.565, P<.001), which jointly explained nearly 67% of the adoption intention variance. Information characteristics (β=.244, P<.001), perceived drawbacks (β=–.097, P=.002), perceived benefits (β=.512, P<.001), and self-efficacy (β=.141, P<.001) jointly determined perceived usefulness and explained about 81% of the variance of perceived usefulness. However, social influence did not have a statistically significant impact on perceived usefulness, and self-efficacy did not significantly influence adoption intention directly. Conclusions By integrating IAM and HBM, this study provided the insight and understanding that perceived usefulness and adoption intention of online health information could be influenced by information characteristics, people’s perceptions of information drawbacks and benefits, and self-efficacy. Moreover, people also exhibited proactive behavior rather than reactive behavior to adopt information. Thus, we should consider these factors when helping the informed public obtain useful information via two approaches: one is to improve the quality of government-based and other official information, and the other is to improve the public’s capacity to obtain information, in order to promote truth and fight rumors. This will, in turn, contribute to saving lives as the pandemic continues to unfold and run its course.

Assessment of practice of Covid-19 preventive measures and associated factors among residents in Southern, Ethiopia

“…This finding is similar to a multi-country study and a mixed approach study from Eastern Ethiopia that reported the same trends [12,16]. In addition, studies revealed that the individual's adoption of the precautionary measures depends on the individual's belief towards the government directions, protectiveness, and effectiveness of Covid-19 preventive measures [12,20,21,29,30]. Besides this, those who had access to water supply were 2.92 times more likely to practice preventive measures compared to those who do not have.…”

Continuance Usage Intention toward E-Payment during the COVID-19 Pandemic from the Financial Sustainable Development Perspective Using Perceived Usefulness and Electronic Word of Mouth as Mediators

“…Therefore, the continuance usage intention of consumers can grow accordingly. This result is in line with previous references [65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79]. The necessity of electronic word of mouth was stressed, and it is suggested that e-payment providers should maintain consumers' confidence of use by providing consumers with secure and quality technologies of perceived usefulness to lay the foundation of establishing electronic word of mouth and improving continuance usage intention.…”

“…Studies on eWOM mainly focus on exploring the multi-faceted nature of sales and consumer behavior, including consumers' information adoption and providing evidence for effects on product preferences and effects on continuance usage intention [69][70][71][72][73][74]. In addition, e-commerce in the business model has become the norm [75] and eWOM has a broad effect on consumer attitudes and behaviors, including consumers' continuance usage intention [76][77][78].…”

Why Do Users of Online Mental Health Communities Get Likes and Reposts: A Combination of Text Mining and Empirical Analysis

“…Based on IAM, users make judgments about the usefulness of information in conjunction with their personal beliefs, which further influence their information adoption behavior [30,33]. According to previous studies, users will recognize information when it is consistent with their personal beliefs, meaning that they find the information to be useful to themselves [34]. In online communities, this recognition may influence some of the users' behaviors, such as following someone who provides the information that they need, or liking and reposting a post that they agreed with.…”