Determinants of Seeking and Avoiding Risk-Related Information in Times of Crisis

COVID-19 information seeking needs and behaviour among citizens in Isfahan, Iran: A qualitative study

BACKGROUND

Access to reliable and credible health information improves individuals' personal care level in crises, such as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. It subsequently results in enhancing the community's health and reducing the health system's costs.

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed to investigate the COVID-19 related information seeking behaviour demonstrated by citizens in Isfahan, Iran.

METHODS

This research was conducted in 2020 and employed a qualitative approach using conventional content analysis. The research population was selected from almost different social classes of people in Iran using purposive sampling. The saturation point was reached at 24 semi-structured interviews. The data's soundness was confirmed based on the criteria of credibility, confirmability, dependability and transferability proposed by Guba and Lincoln.

RESULTS

The findings revealed five subcategories and 25 codes within the information seeking behaviour. The subcategories included attitude towards the COVID-19 crisis, information needs, information resources, information validation and information seeking barriers.

CONCLUSION

People seek information from various resources to update their knowledge and become more prepared in the face of COVID-19. The findings can be used to develop policies on informing and preventing the dissemination of false information in crises, such as the COVID-19 crisis.

The effect of fear and situational motivation on online information avoidance: The case of COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a plethora of online sources for information and news dissemination have emerged. Extant research suggests that very quickly, individuals become disinterested and begin avoiding the information. In this study, we investigate how an individual's fear and situational motivation impact Online Information Avoidance. Using the self-determination theory and information avoidance theories, we argue that fear and external regulation are associated with increased Online Information Avoidance. We also argue that intrinsic motivation and identified regulation are associated with a decrease in Online Information Avoidance. Our findings suggest that fear, intrinsic motivation, and external regulation drive Online Information Avoidance, where intrinsic motivation is the most significant driver. We also found that identified regulation is a crucial inhibitor of Online Information Avoidance. While focusing on COVID-19, our study contributes to the broader information systems research literature and specifically to the information avoidance literature during a pandemic or a prolonged crisis. Our study's findings will be useful for governments, health organizations, and communities that utilize online platforms, forums, and related outlets to reach larger audiences for disseminating pertinent information and recommendations during a crisis.

Improving fire risk communication between authorities and micro-entrepreneurs: A mental models study of Ghanaian central market fires

This study conceptualizes how fire management authorities can empower nonexpert public to participate in fire risk communication processes and increase their own responsibilities for managing fire preventive, protective and recovery processes effectively. Drawing narratives from 10 disaster management experts working at government institutions and nine micro-entrepreneurs operating self-sustaining businesses in different merchandized lines in Ghana, we analyzed the data thematically and explored new insights on mental models to generate a two-way fire risk communication model. The findings suggest that fire management authorities planned fire disasters at the strategic level, collaborated with multiple stakeholders, disseminated information through many risk communication methods, and utilized their capabilities to manage fire at the various stages of fire risk communication, but the outcomes were poor. The micro-entrepreneurs sought to improve fire management outcomes through attitude change, law enforcement actions, strengthened security and better public trust building. The study has implications for policymakers, governments, and risk communication authorities of developing countries to strengthen their fire disaster policies to minimize commercial fire incidents and address the damaging effects of fire on people's livelihoods, businesses, properties, and environments. Our proposed two-way fire risk communication model is a new theoretical lens for experts and the nonexpert public to assess each other's beliefs about risk information and manage fire risk communication effectively at all stages.

Understanding Information Processing and Protective Behaviors during the Pandemic: A Three-Wave Longitudinal Study

BACKGROUND

Few existing studies have examined information processing as an independent variable to predict subsequent information behaviors in a pandemic context, and the mechanism of subsequent information behavior processing following the initial or prior information behavior is unclear.

OBJECTIVE

Our study aims to apply the risk information seeking and processing model to explain the mechanism of subsequent systematic information processing in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHODS

A three-wave longitudinal online national survey was administered during the period of July 2020 to September 2020. Path analysis was conducted to test the relationships between prior and subsequent systematic information processing and protective behaviors.

RESULTS

One important finding was the key role of prior systematic information processing, as indirect hazard experience was found to be a direct predictor of risk perception (β = 0.15, p = 0.004) and an indirect predictor of protective behaviors. Another important finding was the central role of information insufficiency as a mediator/driving force in subsequent systematic information processing and protective behavior.

CONCLUSIONS

The study has made important contributions in that it extends the scholarship on health information behaviors by (a) highlighting that relevant hazard experience in risk information seeking and processing model should be expanded to include indirect experience, and (b) providing the mechanism of subsequent systematic information processing following prior information processing. Our study also provides practical implications on health/risk communication and protective behaviors' promotion in the pandemic context.

Thinking without knowing: Psychological and behavioral consequences of unjustified confidence regarding blackjack strategy

In two studies, we explored potential psychological and behavioral consequences of unjustified confidence, including outcome expectations, anxiety, risk taking, and information search and consideration. Study 1 employed an individual-differences approach to examine how participants' confidence regarding their knowledge of blackjack strategy, controlling for their actual knowledge, correlated with these hypothesized psychological and behavioral variables. Study 2 manipulated participants' confidence levels to examine these effects. Across the two studies, greater unjustified confidence led to larger bets (a measure of risk taking) and reduced use of hints designed to improve play (information search and consideration). Unjustified confidence also increased participants' outcome expectations and lowered anxiety levels. Implications of these findings, such as for educational interventions, are discussed.

Official sources, news outlets, or search engines? Rumour validation on social media during Hurricanes Harvey and Irma

This study, based on data collected from a representative sample of adults in the United States, explores the social cognitive variables that motivated Americans to validate rumours on social media about Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, both of which struck in August/September 2017. The results indicate that risk perception and negative emotions are positively related to systematic processing of relevant risk information, and that systematic processing is significantly related to rumour validation through search engines such as Google. In contrast, trust in information about the hurricane is significantly related to validation through official sources, such as FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), and major news outlets such as The New York Times. Trust in information is also significantly related to systematic processing of risk information. The findings of this study suggest that ordinary citizens may be motivated to validate rumours on social media, which is an increasingly important issue in contemporary societies.

Exploring the roles of fear and powerlessness in the relationship between perceived risk of the COVID-19 pandemic and information-avoidance behavior

The COVID-19 has seriously impacted various aspects of the society on a global scale. However, it is still unclear how perceived risk influences epidemic information-avoidance behavior which generally helps us understand public information avoidance. This study aimed to assess the relationship between the perceived epidemic risk and information-avoidance behavior and the mediating role of fear and powerlessness during the COVID-19 pandemic in China. A total of 557 Chinese respondents with COVID-19 treated in modular hospitals ranging from 16 to 72 years old were recruited and completed questionnaires in the face-to-face manner containing scales of the perceived epidemic risk of COVID-19, fear, powerlessness, and information-avoidance behavior. To test the conceptual model, we adopted structural equation modeling (SEM) with the perceived risk of the COVID-19 pandemic as a predictor, fear and powerlessness as mediating variables, and information-avoidance behavior as the outcome. The results indicated a significant and positive association between the perceived epidemic risk of COVID-19 and information-avoidance behavior. Powerlessness acted as the mediator between the perceived epidemic risk of COVID-19 and information-avoidance behavior. The perceived epidemic risk of COVID-19 influenced information-avoidance behavior through fear and powerlessness in turn. Findings from this study implied that public health managers should consider the mediating roles of negative emotions such as fear and powerlessness for coping with behaviors in public health emergencies, especially the information avoidance behaviors related to risk perception.

Information Avoidance in the Age of COVID-19: A Meta-Analysis

Guided by three major theoretical frameworks, this meta-analysis synthesizes 17 empirical studies (15 articles with 18,297 participants, 13 of them are from non-representative samples) and quantifies the effect sizes of a list of antecedents (e.g., cognitive, affective, and social factors) on information avoidance during the COVID-19 context. Findings indicated that information-related factors including channel belief (r = -.35, p < .01) and information overload (r = .23, p < .01) are more important in determining individual's avoidance behaviors toward COVID-19 information. Factors from the psychosocial aspects, however, had low correlations with information avoidance. While informational subjective norms released a negative correlation (r = -.16, p < .1) which was approaching significant, positive and negative risk responses were not associated with information avoidance. Moderator analysis further revealed that the impacts of several antecedents varied for people with different demographic characteristics (i.e., age, gender, region of origin), and under certain sampling methods. Theoretically, this meta-analysis may help determine the most dominant factors from a larger landscape, thus providing valuable directions to refine frameworks and approaches in health information behaviors. Findings from moderator analysis have also practically inspired certain audience segmentation strategies to tackle occurrence of information avoidance during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Health Disparities in Online COVID-19 Information Seeking and Protective Behaviors: A Two-Wave Longitudinal Study

The COVID-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the U.S. However, the adoption of protective behaviors in response to COVID-19 varies among sociodemographic groups. To better understand the disparities in U.S. adults' adoption of protective behaviors in relation to sociodemographic factors, we conducted a two-wave panel survey in the U.S. Although sociodemographic factors were not found to be significant predictors in lagged regression analysis, results from a cross-sectional analysis showed that the White, younger, and higher educated individuals were more likely to take protective behaviors. Furthermore, based on the structural equation modeling, indirect effects were observed. Specifically, online COVID-19 information seeking mediated the effects of age and education on performance of protective behaviors, and subjective norms and online COVID-19 information seeking were found to be significant serial mediators of these relationships. The study not only extends the health disparities and health information seeking literature, but also offers practical insights to health campaigns and interventions promoting protective behaviors during a pandemic and reducing health disparities.

Social Cohesion: Mitigating Societal Risk in Case Studies of Digital Media in Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria

Natural disasters affect thousands of communities every year, leaving behind human losses, billions of dollars in rebuilding efforts, and psychological affectation in survivors. How fast a community recovers from a disaster or even how well a community can mitigate risk from disasters depends on how resilient that community is. One main factor that influences communities' resilience is how a community comes together in times of need. Social cohesion is considered to be"the glue that holds society together, which can be better examined in a critical situation. There is no consensus on measuring social cohesion, but recent literature indicates that social media communications and communities play an essential role in today's disaster mitigation strategies.This research explores how to quantify social cohesion through social media outlets during disasters. The approach involves combining and implementing text processing techniques and graph network analysis to understand the relationships between nine different types of participants during hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. Visualizations are employed to illustrate these connections, their evolution before, during, and after disasters, and the degree of social cohesion throughout their timeline. The proposed measurement of social cohesion through social media networks presented in this work can provide future risk management and disaster mitigation policies. This social cohesion measure identifies the types of actors in a social network and how this network varies daily. Therefore, decisionmakers could use this measure to release strategic communication before, during, and after a disaster strikes, thus providing relevant information to people in need.

The More Insufficient, the More Avoidance? Cognitive and Affective Factors that Relates to Information Behaviours in Acute Risks

This study examines the relationship between cognitive and affective factors and people's information-seeking and -avoiding behaviours in acute risks with a 1,946-sample online survey conducted in February 2020, during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China. Multiple linear regression analysis showed that perceived information insufficiency correlates negatively with information-seeking behaviour and there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between information insufficiency and avoidance behaviour. As for the risk-related cognitive factors, information seeking increases as perceived severity of risks rises, while information avoiding increases as perceived susceptibility rises. Perceived response efficacy positively correlates with information-seeking and negatively with information-avoidance behaviours. Preliminary results also indicated that different affective factors relate to information-seeking and avoidance behaviours differently.

Internet Public Opinion Risk Grading under Emergency Event Based on AHPSort II-DEMATEL

The internet often serves as a communication platform for users to freely express opinions. However, as it supports the quick and wide spread of public opinions, it often results in great uncertainty and is very difficult to control. As a result, evaluating the risk levels of internet public opinion becomes very challenging. The safety of internet public opinion affects the sustainability and stability of society. In this paper, a novel conceptual model of internet public opinion governance is proposed. The model can be used to grade risk levels by combining the Analytic Hierarchy Process Sort II (AHPSort II) and Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) under a fuzzy environment with triangular fuzzy sets. A numerical example is provided to verify the efficiency of the proposed method, and some managerial implications are also discussed.

Efficacy, Action, and Support for Reducing Climate Change Risks

A growing body of research demonstrates that believing action to reduce the risks of climate change is both possible (self-efficacy) and effective (response efficacy) is essential to motivate and sustain risk mitigation efforts. Despite this potentially critical role of efficacy beliefs, measures and their use vary wildly in climate change risk perception and communication research, making it hard to compare and learn from efficacy studies. To address this problem and advance our understanding of efficacy beliefs, this article makes three contributions. First, we present a theoretically motivated approach to measuring climate change mitigation efficacy, in light of diverse proposed, perceived, and previously researched strategies. Second, we test this in two national survey samples (Amazon's Mechanical Turk N = 405, GfK Knowledge Panel N = 1,820), demonstrating largely coherent beliefs by level of action and discrimination between types of efficacy. Four additive efficacy scales emerge: personal self-efficacy, personal response efficacy, government and collective self-efficacy, and government and collective response efficacy. Third, we employ the resulting efficacy scales in mediation models to test how well efficacy beliefs predict climate change policy support, controlling for specific knowledge, risk perceptions, and ideology, and allowing for mediation by concern. Concern fully mediates the relatively strong effects of perceived risk on policy support, but only partly mediates efficacy beliefs. Stronger government and collective response efficacy beliefs and personal self-efficacy beliefs are both directly and indirectly associated with greater support for reducing the risks of climate change, even after controlling for ideology and causal beliefs about climate change.

Behavioral Response in the Immediate Aftermath of Shaking: Earthquakes in Christchurch and Wellington, New Zealand, and Hitachi, Japan

This study examines people’s response actions in the first 30 min after shaking stopped following earthquakes in Christchurch and Wellington, New Zealand, and Hitachi, Japan. Data collected from 257 respondents in Christchurch, 332 respondents in Hitachi, and 204 respondents in Wellington revealed notable similarities in some response actions immediately after the shaking stopped. In all four events, people were most likely to contact family members and seek additional information about the situation. However, there were notable differences among events in the frequency of resuming previous activities. Actions taken in the first 30 min were weakly related to: demographic variables, earthquake experience, contextual variables, and actions taken during the shaking, but were significantly related to perceived shaking intensity, risk perception and affective responses to the shaking, and damage/infrastructure disruption. These results have important implications for future research and practice because they identify promising avenues for emergency managers to communicate seismic risks and appropriate responses to risk area populations.