Front Public Health. 2026 Mar 25;14:1731670. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2026.1731670. eCollection 2026.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Cultivating public protective behaviors is essential for the successful prevention and control of emerging infectious diseases epidemics, such as COVID-19. Government information release plays an important role in promoting proactive public protective behaviors. The existing literature lacks comprehensive understanding of the impact of government information release on public protective behaviors under different conditions.
METHODS: This research proposes a number of research hypotheses for the effect of government information release on public protective behaviors mediated by risk perception and institutional trust. The Mediator, also known as the mediating variable, is a significant statistical concept employed to analyze the mechanism of influence between the independent and dependent variables.
RESULTS: The empirical research during the normalization phase of COVID-19 epidemics prevention and control in China indicates that government information release significantly influences public protective behaviors by the mediating roles of risk perception and institutional trust.
CONCLUSION: The research provides insights for designing strategies for cultivating public protective behaviors from the perspective from the information release and fostering institutional trust.
PMID:41960388 | PMC:PMC13057391 | DOI:10.3389/fpubh.2026.1731670
