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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Education and Promotion
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1556542
The bright side of social media information overload for anti-COVID-19 behaviors: A stimulus-organism-response framework
Provisionally accepted- 1School of Flight, Anyang Institute of Technology, Anyang, Henan, China
- 2School of business, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, China
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Social media has an important impact on social management by communicating information that influences individual behavior; however, too much social media information can cause user information overload. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic context provides an opportunity to analyze the impact of social media information overload on individuals' prosocial behaviors in emergency events.In this study, the impact of social media information overload on people's anti-COVID-19 behaviors, that is, behaviors that limit the transmission of COVID-19, was investigated by linking norm activation theory and information overload theory. Data were collected from 242 Chinese participants, and structural equation modeling was used for data analysis. The results showed that social media information overload positively influenced the awareness of consequences and the ascription of responsibility in anti-COVID-19 behaviors and that ascription of responsibility and awareness of consequences could activate people's personal norms and eventually motivate people to engage in prosocial behaviors for epidemic prevention. These findings could extend the information overload concept to a public health emergency context and yield useful insights for world pandemic control.
Keywords: Information overload, Norm activation theory, COVID-19 pandemic, Prosocial Behavior, Epidemic prevention
Received: 07 Jan 2025; Accepted: 31 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Meng, Zhong and Cao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Junwei Cao, School of business, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.