Checking the Facts! Exploring Social Media Users' Sharing Behavior of Verified COVID Model

Sharing verified information on social media is critical to preventing the spread of dangerous misinformation, protecting public health, and promoting informed decision-making during health crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to shift the focus from the detrimental impact of social media users in disseminating unverified information during crises, to exploring the potential for motivating these same users to counteract the COVID-19 infodemic by sharing verified information. Our research model is grounded in the comprehensive action determination model and rigorously tested through empirical data obtained from a sample of 395 social media users. Our findings indicate that users’ verified information sharing behavior is influenced directly by attitude, personal norm, social norm, habit, self-efficacy and indirectly by perceived threat and response efficacy. Our study highlights the role of social media users to combat the spread of unverified information during health crises and offers significant theoretical and practical implications.