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Abstract
Drawing upon the protective action decision model and the heuristic-systematic model, this study investigated the determinants of parents’ response to the 2016 vaccine crisis in Shandong Province, China. A survey was conducted from Anhui Province (N = 456). The findings showed that both perceived vaccine knowledge and perceptions of risk from the vaccine crisis were vital in predicting parents’ information insufficiency (the perceived discrepancy between actual and desired levels of vaccine knowledge), information seeking, information processing (where parents make a judgement about information validity), and their intentions towards childhood vaccination. In addition, information insufficiency and information seeking also significantly facilitated parents’ information processing. When parents described processing information systematically, they were more likely to accept childhood vaccination. On the other hand, seeking more information about the crisis did not influence reported childhood vaccination practices. Implications and suggestions for health-related crisis communication research are discussed.
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge funding support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71702180). The authors are grateful to all parents who participated in survey. We also thank the editor and the two anonymous reviewers for their detailed and helpful feedback.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. The survey was distributed nearly twenty days after the occurrence of the vaccine crisis (March 18), leaving enough time for the public to obtain released information about detailed processes of the incident.