Abstract
Health rumors often mislead people and cause adverse health behaviors. Especially during a public health emergency, health rumors may result in severe consequences for people’s health and risk governance. Insight into how these rumors form and harm people’s health behavior is critical for assisting people in establishing scientific health cognition and to enhance public health emergency responses. Using the case study with interview data of a salient purchase craze led by a health rumor during the COVID-19 outbreak in China, this article aimed to illustrate the process of how a piece of information becomes a health rumor. Furthermore, we identify factors that cause people to believe rumors and conduct behavior that leads to a purchase craze. Results show that a public misunderstanding of the unique psychology of uncertainty, cultural and social cognition, and conformity behavior jointly informs people’s beliefs in rumors and further causes purchase craze behavior. We developed a simplified model to demonstrate how an ordinary news report can lead to a rumor. Based on this model, some implications of effective health communication are suggested for managing rumors.
Highlights
In the public health field, the public is prone to learning about health and investigating their own health conditions by obtaining massive amounts of health information
Focusing on the specific COVID-19 era, we aimed to offer the implication of health communication for combating the “infodemic” during this COVID-19 outbreak
Rumors always occur during public health emergencies and often mislead people’s health perceptions and behaviors
Summary
In the public health field, the public is prone to learning about health and investigating their own health conditions by obtaining massive amounts of health information. If many pieces of such widespread information are inaccurate or even totally wrong, people can become misinformed and conduct wrongful health behaviors [1,2]. In this article, such inaccurate or incorrect information is defined as a rumor, which always thrive during crises. From the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak to the Ebola outbreak and further to the current COVID-19 outbreak, various rumors can quickly spread through a range of media and communication channels that influence people’s risk perception and mislead people’s behaviors [3,4,5,6,7].
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