Selective exposure to COVID-19 vaccination information: the influence of prior attitude, perceived threat level and information limit

PurposeThe massive amount of available information and functionality of the Internet makes selective information seeking effortless. This paper aims to understand the selective exposure to information during a health decision-making task.Design/methodology/approachThis study conducted an experiment with a sample of 36 students to examine the influence of prior attitude, perceived threat level and information limit on users’ selective exposure to and recall of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination information. Participants were assigned to two conditions with or without an upper limit of the number of articles to be examined, and this study collected the number of articles read, the number of articles included in the report and recall score of the articles after one day of the experiment.FindingsThis study found that (1) participants with a negative attitude were more inclined to view attitude-consistent information and recalled attitude-consistent information more accurately, while participants with a positive attitude viewed more balanced information; (2) participants perceiving higher health threat level recalled attitude-consistent information more accurately; and (3) an upper limit on the number of articles to be viewed does not have any impact on selective exposure.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings of this paper pinpoint the disparity of influence of positive and negative attitudes on selective exposure to and selective recall of health information, which was not previously recognized.Practical implicationsVaccination campaigns should focus on reaching people with negative attitudes who are more prone to selective exposure to encourage them to seek more balanced information.Originality/valueThis is the first paper to explore selective exposure to COVID-19 vaccination information. This study found that people with a negative attitude and a higher level of perceived health threat are more prone to selective exposure, which was not found in previous research.