Associations of Individualism, Economic Development and Worry Tendency with COVID-19 Risk Information on 132 Government Websites

Government communication is vital to end COVID-19 as a persistent threat. Yet little is known about how governments communicate about COVID-19 effectively. We evaluated the health information on government websites and investigated how country-level factors are associated with providing COVID-19 information. A content analysis of 132 COVID-19 webpages was conducted to identify the salience of health messages (i.e., threat, efficacy, and resilience). Multinomial logistic regression estimated the relationship between country-level predictors (i.e., economic development, individualism scores, and worry risk index) and information salience. Accumulated death, the number of discharged patients, and daily new cases were prevalent on the main webpages. Subpages provided information regarding vulnerability statistics, government responses, and vaccination rates. Less than 10% of the countries created messages to instill self-efficacy. Countries with high individualism scores emphasized threat statistics in subpages, including reporting daily new cases (OR=1.05, 95% CI= 1.02–1.09), average cases (OR=1.08, 95% CI=1.00–1.16), and COVID-19 mortalities (OR= 1.04, 95% CI=1.01–1.06). Individualistic countries presented statistics aimed to foster efficacy and resilience on subpages, including reporting response efficacy (OR=1.04, 95% CI=1.01–1.08), recovery numbers (OR=1.03, 95% CI=1.01–1.07), and vaccination rates (OR=1.04, 95% CI=1.01–1.08). Government communication regarding COVID-19 prioritized threat statistics and individuals’ preventive behaviors over encouraging a sense of self-efficacy. Compared to economic development and worry tendency, countries’ individualistic orientations were more predictive of reporting information about the severity, response efficacy, and collective resilience on subpages of dedicated websites. Improving public health agencies’ communication of COVID-19 is warranted.