Information Behavior in COVID-19 Prevention: Does Anxiety among Indonesian Mothers Have an Effect?

Abstract

The pandemic of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has contributed more challenges for mothers as the family's primary caregiver in overcoming the widespread infection. Pandemic-related information is essential for mothers to reduce uncertainty as well as to maintain the health of family members during this unprecedented situation. Adopting the framework of the Situational Theory of Problem Solving, this study extends the theory by, first, testing the mediating role of COVID-19 anxiety on mothers' information seeking and information forwarding, referred to as active communication action of problem solving, as well as preventive behavior; and second, by predicting the effect of information seeking on preventive behavior. Referring to an online survey from 371 Indonesian mothers, the findings suggest that in terms of direct effect, only problem recognition was found to have no significant effect on situational motivation. The results suggest that Indonesian mothers perceive COVID-19 as personally relevant so that they are motivated to solve the problem by seeking and forwarding related information. In addition, COVID-19 anxiety was found to play a significant role in predicting information seeking, information forwarding, and preventive behavior. The result of this study is expected to give insights for risk communicators and health professionals in Indonesia in communicating COVID-19, particularly to mothers.