Health Beliefs, Trust in Media Sources, Health Literacy, and Preventive Behaviors among High-Risk Chinese for COVID-19

Abstract

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) broke out in China in January 2020 and has been effectively controlled in April 2020 after China's relentless efforts. People's engagement in disease-related preventive behaviors is crucial in containing such infectious disease. Vulnerable populations often have higher chances of developing severe illness from COVID-19 and the mortality rate is also higher. Thus, at-risk populations for COVID-19 request extra attention. The current study conducted a national online survey among vulnerable populations in China in early February 2020 to examine their engagement in coronavirus-related preventive health behaviors (e.g., frequent handwashing) and the potential determinants including factors from the Health Belief Model, trust in different media sources, and health literacy. The results suggested that the vulnerable populations' engagement in coronavirus-related preventive behaviors were significantly associated with barriers, benefits, self-efficacy, trust in doctors' social media, and trust in TV for COVID-19-related information. Besides, barriers, benefits, self-efficacy, trust in doctors' social media, and trust in TV mediated the effects of health literacy on preventive behaviors. Our findings provided directions for future health promotions and interventions targeting vulnerable populations to enhance their preventive behaviors in China.

What Explains Natives and Sojourners Preventive Health Behavior in a Pandemic: Role of Media and Scientific Self-Efficacy

“…These findings were aligned with the existing literature, in which efficacies helped formulate protective actions and responses to the pandemic crisis (Rui et al, 2021). MSE (H4: β = 0.276, ρ < 0.05) and SSE (H5: β = 0.214, ρ < 0.05) showed a significant impact on the definition of health-protective behavior, which was in line with the existing pool of literature (Niu et al, 2021;Stosic et al, 2021;Wang et al, 2021). Furthermore, the benefits of being protected were observed to be significant in the overall model (H6: β = 0.133, ρ < 0.05), as suggested by Al-Sabbagh et al (2021) and Zampetakis and Melas (2021).…”

“…However, in recent decades, it became an integral part of HBM, as it holds a significant explanatory power to define public health concerns and protective behavior (Carico et al, 2020;Mirzaei-Alavijeh et al, 2020;Shahnazi et al, 2020;Tajeri et al, 2020). In existing HBM-based studies, self-efficacy was noted as a significant construct in exploring COVID19related behavioral research (Niu et al, 2021). Zhou et al (2020) suggested that correct news (information) could be an effective measure to control and reduce disease spread during the pandemic crisis, as self-efficacy enables individuals to seek valid and reliable health-related information in a more systematic fashion (Shang and Zuo, 2020).…”

“…An individual’s confidence in accessing, analyzing, evaluating, interacting, and participating is related to media content. In the context of the current pandemic crisis, trust in media has been recorded as a significant construct that defines public health-protective behavior ( Niu et al, 2021 ). Moreover, the source of information also helps define risk perception and related health-protective behavior ( Wang et al, 2021 ).…”

Health Literacy and Disparities in Knowledge, Attitude and Practice Regarding COVID-19 Among College Students During the COVID-19 Outbreak in China: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…The pandemic had spread rapidly across the country and had caused severe impact and harm to the production and life of the public. 5,6 On 20 January 2020, approved by the Chinese State Council and according to the prevention and control of infectious diseases of the People's Republic of China, the National Health Commission of China included COVID-19 into category B infectious disease and managed it in accordance with category A infectious diseases. 7 Category A infectious diseases are compulsorily managed infectious diseases, referred to as severe infectious diseases that are highly contagious and have a high case fatality rate, which are likely to cause pandemic.…”

Measuring COVID-19 Related Health Literacy in Healthcare Professionals—Psychometric Evaluation of the HL-COV-HP Instrument

“…A higher level of health literacy, especially e-health literacy, is associated with COVID-19 awareness [8], positive attitudes towards preventive strategies against COVID-19 [9][10][11][12][13][14], and a higher adherence to prevention guidelines [8,15]. Health literacy is positively associated with COVID-19 vaccination acceptance [16] and can mitigate the negative effects of healthcare system distrust on vaccination willingness [17,18].…”