Song S, Yao X, Wen N. What motivates Chinese consumers to avoid information about the COVID-19 pandemic?: The perspective of the stimulus-organism-response model[J]. Information Processing & Management, 2021, 58(1): 102407.

Abstract：This study investigated consumers’ information-avoidance behavior in the context of a public health emergency—the COVID-19 pandemic in China. Guided by the stimulus-organism-response paradigm, it proposes a model for exploring the effects of external stimuli (perceived threat and perceived information overload) related to COVID-19 on consumers’ internal states (sadness, anxiety, and cognitive dissonance) and their subsequent behavioral intentions to avoid health information and engage in preventive behaviors. With a survey sample (N = 721), we empirically examined the proposed model and tested the hypotheses. The results indicate that sadness, anxiety, and cognitive dissonance, which were a result of perceived threat and perceived information overload, had heterogeneous effects on information avoidance. Anxiety and cognitive dissonance increased information avoidance intention, while sadness decreased information avoidance intention. Moreover, information avoidance predicted a reluctance on the part of consumers to engage in preventive behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings not only contribute to the information behavior literature and extend the concept of information avoidance to a public health emergency context, but also yield practical insights for global pandemic control.

Keywords：Public health emergency；Information avoidance；Information overload；Sadness；Anxiety；Cognitive dissonance；S-O-R model

Foundation：Key Projects on Philosophy and Social Sciences Research of the Chinese Ministry of Education [19JZD021]; Research Funds from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [72002103]; Young Scholars in the School of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Science and Technology [JGQN1908]; Social Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province [20TQC004]; and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [30919013203]