Impact of conspiracy beliefs on Covid-19 fear and health protective behavior: a case of university students

Abstract

PurposeThis study investigated the impact of conspiracy beliefs on fear of Covid-19 and health protective behavior of university students in Pakistan.Design/methodology/approachA cross-sectional survey using an online questionnaire was conducted at three universities in Punjab (e.g. two public sectors and one private sector) with permission from concerned authorities for data collection. A total of 374 responses were received that were analyzed by applying both descriptive and inferential statistics.FindingsThe results indicated the prevalence of conspiracy beliefs and fear of Covid-19 among university students of two public sector universities and one private sector university. Furthermore, the conspiracy beliefs of university students predicted their fear of Covid-19. However, conspiracy beliefs did not predict the health protective behavior of university students.Research limitations/implicationsThese results had serious implications for public health in Pakistan demonstrating the critical need for health education and promotion as individual preparedness along with system preparedness is essential to combat Covid-19 pandemic and infodemic. These results are useful for policymakers, healthcare professionals, university administration and library staff for making evidence-based decisions toward health education and promotion related to the Covid-19 pandemic.Originality/valueIt is hoped that the present study would make an invaluable contribution to existing research on promotional health in general and the role of conspiracy beliefs in putting public health at risk in particular as limited studies have been published so far.

Evaluation of orthorexia nervosa tendency and fear of COVID-19 in university students receiving health education

“…The mean FCV-19S score of medical faculty students was determined as 16.7 ± 5.3 (Nguyen et al , 2020). In a study conducted with university students in Pakistan, the mean FCV-19S score was determined 3.5 ± 1.0 (Naveed et al , 2021). In this study, mean FCV-19S score of university students receiving health sciences education was 17.8 ± 5.3 points.…”

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“…Readers may also be interested in some articles on related information behaviour in Part I of our special issue (Huang et al , 2021). A cross-sectional survey (Naveed et al , 2021) showed the prevalence of conspiracy beliefs and fear of COVID-19 among Pakistan university students and how their conspiracy beliefs could predict their fear of COVID-19. Nguyen and Le (2021) investigated how to strengthen the uptake of older people's COVID-19 behavioural outcomes due to information value and perceived threat through social media, which presented plausible reasons for behavioural disclosure, including facemask wearing, handwashing and social distancing.…”

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“…One hot issue related to electronic news, especially on social media and other electronic means, is the spreading of misinformation and fake news (Naveed et al , 2021; Au et al , 2021a, b; Ho et al , 2022). In the issue, Zhang et al (2022) studied the features of health misinformation on social media sites (SMSs) to help easy identification by users and social media companies.…”