ABSTRACT
Identifying and understanding the hesitancy degree of public COVID-19 vaccine in emergency may be helpful to the dissemination of vaccine-related public health information. Through a survey among the adult population of Chinese mainland (N = 1080) after the COVID-19 vaccine was approved for mass vaccination, it is found that although more than 80% of the public (87.8%) have a low hesitancy attitude towards COVID-19 vaccine, a considerable number of people still have a medium hesitancy and a high hesitancy attitude towards COVID-19 vaccine (the middle hesitancy rate is 9.8% and the high hesitancy rate is 2.4%). By multiple logistic regression, the subjective and objective knowledge levels of medium-high hesitancy group and low hesitancy group in COVID-19 vaccine were compared. The results showed that there were significant differences in subjective and objective knowledge levels between medium-high hesitancy group and low-hesitancy group in COVID-19 vaccine. Compared with those with low hesitancy, those with medium and high hesitancy have lower subjective knowledge level and objective knowledge level. The influence of subjective knowledge level on public vaccine hesitancy is significantly greater than that of objective knowledge. In addition, through multiple linear regression, the study found that the information channel had a significant impact on the public's subjective and objective knowledge. Receiving vaccine information from television, web pages, health professionals, health departments can promote subjective knowledge and objective knowledge, while receiving vaccine information from family and friends reduces subjective knowledge and objective knowledge. Considering the geographical location of the population in this study, the research results in this paper cannot be extended to the public in other countries. However, the method used in this paper is helpful for researchers to understand the hesitancy degree of COVID-19 vaccines in other places and its relationship with the public knowledge level of COVID-19 vaccines. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Labeling products with organic certification logos is a means of indicating to consumers that those products are government certified. However, in Taiwan, organic certification is not required before a food product claims itself organic. Since previous research showed that the COVID-19 lockdown effected both Spanish and Romanian subjects' intention to purchase more sustainable products, the aim of this study was to determine whether the perception of organic certification labeling makes a difference in how organic shoppers' purchasing intentions toward organic produce were realized. Data from organic produce shoppers were used to identify organic certification labeling differences. One group of shoppers was asked about their purchase behaviors toward government-certified organic produce labeled with the certification logo (N = 468), while the other was asked about their purchase behaviors toward self-claimed organic produce without a government certification logo (N = 403). Multi-group structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques were employed as the main method of analysis in this study. The results indicated that the hypothesized model was validated. In addition, through this process, it was clarified that this government organic certification labeling significantly enhances the influence of organic produce shoppers' behavioral beliefs regarding organic produce on their attitudes.
ABSTRACT
The exposure to relevant social and/or historical events can increase the generation of false memories (FMs). The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a calamity challenging health, political, and journalistic bodies, with media generating confusion that has facilitated the spread of fake news. In this respect, our study aims at investigating the relationships between memories (true memories, TMs vs. FMs) for COVID-19-related news and different individual variables (i.e., use of traditional and social media, COVID-19 perceived and objective knowledge, fear of the disease, depression and anxiety symptoms, reasoning skills, and coping mechanisms). One hundred and seventy-one university students (131 females) were surveyed. Overall, our results suggested that depression and anxiety symptoms, reasoning skills, and coping mechanisms did not affect the formation of FMs. Conversely, the fear of loved ones contracting the infection was found to be negatively associated with FMs. This finding might be due to an empathy/prosociality-based positive bias boosting memory abilities, also explained by the young age of participants. Furthermore, objective knowledge (i) predicted an increase in TMs and decrease in FMs and (ii) significantly mediated the relationships between the use of social media and development of both TMs and FMs. In particular, higher levels of objective knowledge strengthened the formation of TMs and decreased the development of FMs following use of social media. These results may lead to reconsidering the idea of social media as the main source of fake news. This claim is further supported by either the lack of substantial differences between the use of traditional and social media among participants reporting FMs or the positive association between use of social media and levels of objective knowledge. The knowledge about the topic rather than the type of source would make a difference in the process of memory formation.