The moderating effect of fake news on the relationship between behavioral patterns and vaccines

Before the pandemic, one of the phenomena that attracted significant attention to scholars in different fields of knowledge was fake news. This phenomenon is considered misleading elements within news content or a social context. This definition also considers false information, mainly published and distributed through the internet. In this way, this phenomenon has been essential to understanding social adaptation processes to the new conditions in the context of the pandemic and post-pandemic. This adaptation process has required the vaccination of the world population, mainly to deal with the spread of the Covid-19 virus. So, this research analyzes the moderating effect of fake news on the relationship between behavioral factors (moral standards, environmental concern, and health consciousness) and the Intention to be vaccinated. Information was collected from 530 undergraduate students, and an experiment was used to test the relationship. Participants were invited to the system laboratory to analyze the factors that determine vaccination when consumers are influenced by fake news about vaccines, such as Sinovac. The results show that behavioral factors, such as moral norms and environmental concerns, and health consciousness positively influence vaccination intention. Regarding the moderating effects of fake news, moral norms and environmental concerns had a strong influence; vaccination intentions decreased when their influence was low. There was no sustainable difference between participants who read fake or true news for trustworthy news.