Societal perceptions of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy: strategic communicative action in problem solving

Purpose The current study seeks to understand the strategic communicative processes in which various health information seeking media sources impact intentions to engage with opposing positions of specific health behaviors such as COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Guided by the situational theory of problem-solving (STOPS) framework, the study explores the relationships between traditional media use and social media use, or information acquisition as an antecedent, on perceptions of problem recognition, constraint recognition and involvement recognition, which in turn, impact situational motivation for COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Design/methodology/approach A quantitative online survey involving 239 U.S. participants was conducted for this study. Findings Results found that those who recognize COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy as a problematic situation, who wanted to learn more about vaccine hesitancy and who felt low constraint were more motivated to solve the situation and had greater intentions to share and permit information. Specifically, traditional media use positively predicted problem recognition while social media use positively predicted the level of involvement but did not significantly predict problem recognition. Originality/value Findings contribute to public health research by demonstrating that awareness and knowledge of societal-level problematic situations can positively impact communicative behaviors. Results extend STOPS by exploring the mediating impacts that situational factors have on health communication behaviors and extend existing literature by differentiating the separate effects of information seeking source types on situational variables. Study findings provide practical implications for public health professionals and educators. Specifically, understanding levels of recognition with a problematic situation allows for strategic health messaging to be more impactful for specific types of publics.