Abstract
Many health rumors often appear on social media. The widespread spread of these rumors not only damages the reputation of social media platform, but also has a serious impact on individuals and society. Therefore, the research on the spread of health rumors has attracted academic attention. Based on the stimulus-organism-response framework, this study investigates the mediating role of people’s perception for verifying rumors, especially adding the variables of social consistency to explore the interacting effect on the intention to verify. An experiment was conducted to test the research model and the empirical result indicated the positive effect of perceived authenticity and perceived importance and the negative effect of perceived trust on verifying rumors. Besides, social consistency will moderate positively the effect of perceived trust and moderate negatively the effect of perceived importance. Compared to the wish rumors, the dread rumors will produce higher perceived importance and perceived trust. This study provides theoretical implications and practical guidance for online rumor research and practices.
Recommended Citation
Liu, Ying; Jiang, Yi; Zhang, Shuang; and Wei, Zhenkun, "Verifying Online Health Rumors on Social Media: An Empirical Research Based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response Framework" (2021). WHICEB 2021 Proceedings. 46.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/whiceb2021/46