Yangyi Zhang

Background: As a new disease, communities possess little natural immunity to COVID-19 and vaccines are considered critical to preventing and reducing the incidence of severe illness. This study, inspired by Protection Motivation Theory (PMT), examines the relationship between citizens’ threat appraisal, coping appraisal, subjective norms, negative affect, and their COVID-19 vaccination intentions. Methods: A sample of 340 citizens from two main cities in Mainland China, Xi’an and Wuxi, was used for data analysis. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was employed with latent and observed variables to test hypotheses. Data were analyzed using AMOS 24.0. Results: Several findings extend current understanding. Firstly, our proposed model explains 73% of the variance in vaccination intentions. Secondly, perceived severity only indirectly shapes COVID-19 vaccination intentions through negative affect. Thirdly, negative affect and response costs are negatively related to COVID-19 vaccination intentions. Finally, Perceived probability, subjective norms, response efficacy and self-efficacy are positively related to COVID-19 vaccination intentions; among them, self-efficacy contributes the most, followed by response efficacy and subjective norms, and lastly perceived probability. Conclusion: Theoretically, this study increases current understanding about subjective norms and affective responses. We provoke a certain amount of thought about the role of affect response in relation to threat appraisal and vaccination intentions. Specifically, governments must be vigilant that citizens’ negative affect, such as fear, may cause vaccine hesitation.

Widespread misinformation about COVID-19 poses a significant threat to citizens long-term health and the combating of the disease. To fight the spread of misinformation, Chinese governments have used official social media accounts to participate in fact-checking activities. This study aims to investigate why citizens share fact-checks about COVID-19 and how to promote this activity. Based on the elaboration likelihood model, we explore the effects of peripheral cues (social media capital, social media strategy, media richness, and source credibility) and central cues (content theme and content importance) on the number of shares of fact-checks posted by official Chinese Government social media accounts. In total, 820 COVID-19 fact-checks from 413 Chinese Government Sina Weibo accounts were obtained and evaluated. Results show that both peripheral and central cues play important roles in the sharing of fact-checks. For peripheral cues, social media capital and media richness significantly promote the number of shares. Compared with the push strategy, both the pull strategy and networking strategy facilitate greater fact-check sharing. Fact-checks posted by Central Government social media accounts receive more shares than local government accounts. For central cues, content importance positively predicts the number of shares. In comparison to fact-checks about the latest COVID-19 news, government actions received fewer shares, while social conditions received more shares.