Let’s verify and rectify! Examining the nuanced influence of risk appraisal and norms in combatting misinformation

Abstract

Mounting concerns about COVID-19 misinformation and its insidious fallout drive the search for viable solutions. Both scholarly and practical efforts have turned toward raising risk appraisal of misinformation and motivating verification and debunking behaviors. However, individuals remain reluctant to verify and correct misinformation, suggesting a need to develop persuasion strategies to motivate such behaviors. Therefore, with an experiment of 256 participants recruited from Amazon MTurk, this study examines how effectively norm-based messages improve positive behavioral intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings suggest that among individuals with high perceived severity of misinformation, exposure to both descriptive and injunctive norms about verification reduced their intention to rectify misinformation. However, both descriptive and injunctive norms about debunking misinformation increased intentions to engage in preventive behaviors. By probing the “self–other” discrepancy and the “trade-off effect” of risk appraisal, the study further reveals that the perceived severity of misinformation merits in-depth exploration in future research.