The Public's Risk Information Seeking and Avoidance in China During Early Stages of the COVID-19 Outbreak

Frontiers in Psychology

Tingwu Yan¹  Mei Liu²  You Chen²  Dan Shi² 

[1] Department of Agricultural Economics and Management, College of Economics and Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China;Department of Business Administration, College of Economics and Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China;

关键词: information seeking;    information avoidance;    COVID-19;    emerging risk;    risk perception;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2021.649180

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

This study uses the Planned Risk Information Seeking Model (PRISM) to estimate the public's information seeking and avoidance intentions during the COVID-19 outbreak based on an online sample of 1031 Chinese adults and provides support for the applicability of PRISM framework in the situation of a novel high-level risk. The results indicate that information seeking is primarily directed by informational subjective norms (ISN) and perceived seeking control (PSC), while the main predictors of information avoidance include ISN and attitude toward seeking. Because ISN are the strongest predictor of both information seeking and avoidance, the way the public copes with COVID-19 information may be strongly affected by individuals' social environment. Furthermore, a significant relationship between risk perception and affective risk response is identified. Our results also indicate that people who perceive greater knowledge of COVID-19 are more likely to report greater knowledge insufficiency, which results in less information avoidance.

【 授权许可】

Unknown