ABSTRACT The World Health Organisation has emphasised that misinformation – spreading rapidly through social media – poses a serious threat to the COVID-19 response. Drawing from theories of health perception and cognitive load, we develop and test a research model hypothesising why people share unverified COVID-19 information through social media. Our findings suggest a person’s trust in online information and perceived information overload are strong predictors of unverified information sharing. Furthermore, these factors, along with a person’s perceived COVID-19 severity and vulnerability influence cyberchondria. Females were significantly more likely to suffer from cyberchondria, with males more likely to share news without verifying its reliability. Our findings suggest that to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 misinformation and cyberchondria, measures should be taken to enhance a healthy scepticism of health news while simultaneously guarding against information overload.

中文翻译：

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在 COVID-19 大流行期间，是什么推动了未经验证的信息共享和网络问题？

摘要 世界卫生组织强调，错误信息——通过社交媒体迅速传播——对 COVID-19 的反应构成了严重威胁。根据健康感知和认知负荷的理论，我们开发并测试了一个研究模型，假设人们为什么通过社交媒体分享未经验证的 COVID-19 信息。我们的研究结果表明，一个人对在线信息的信任和感知到的信息过载是未经验证的信息共享的有力预测因素。此外，这些因素以及一个人感知到的 COVID-19 严重性和脆弱性会影响网络软骨病。女性更容易患网络软骨病，男性更有可能在不验证其可靠性的情况下分享新闻。我们的研究结果表明，为了减轻 COVID-19 错误信息和网络软骨病的传播，