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This study aims to experimentally investigate branded functional beverage (BFB) consumption behaviour post-COVID-19 through the lens of a conceptual framework built on three renowned behaviour modification models and to critically evaluate how well subjective norms serve as a moderator in the consumption behaviour relating to such beverage products.

A conceptual model was developed based on the tenets of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), health belief model (HBM) and value-attitude-behaviour (VAB) model. The study was performed on a convenience sample of 537 respondents aged 18 and up from diverse regions in India using the PLS-SEM method. A total of 444 useable questionnaires were utilized for the final data analysis.

Given the post-pandemic setting, the perceived benefits of BFBs significantly influenced its purchase intention and consumption behaviour. It could grossly impact the media's role (information about COVID-19) and the consumers' interest in healthy food. The study revealed that the information about COVID-19 (role of media) strongly increased interest in healthy food, whereas interest in healthy food positively influenced purchase intention of functional beverages. With interest in healthy food as a “mediator”, the role of media (information about COVID-19) positively influenced purchase intention. It is worth noting the moderating role of subjective norms in the relationship between the role of media (information about COVID-19) and interest in healthy food and that between interest in healthy food and BFB purchase intention.

Food marketers shall skillfully use “opinion” leaders and subject experts in marketing communication campaigns to popularize the link between good food and immunity through COVID-19 and healthy diet-related messages sent via a suitable media platform. This would grab food consumers' interest in BFBs and persuade them to incorporate such items in their daily food milieu. Consumers need to be assured that consuming “functional” products would deliver health benefits and upkeep their body immunity in the post-COVID-19 times.

There has been minimal research on the link between perceived benefits, the role of media, interest in healthy food and consumption behaviour on functional beverages in the post-COVID-19 setting. Moreover, subjective norms have never been probed as a moderator in the consumer behaviour studies on BFBs. This pioneering study applied the tenets of the TPB, HBM and VAB model in the context of post-pandemic functional beverage consumption. The altered study settings caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the context of a developing economy like India have amplified the research value of this study.

Online health communities (OHCs) have been recognized as emerging platforms on the Internet used for health purposes. Despite its emergence, developing a successful OHC is still a challenge. Prior studies identified that value co-creation behavior (VCB) of members is an essential factor for sustaining OHCs; however, little is known about how members’ behavior drives to co-create value? Therefore, this study aims to discover the inclusive mechanism for members’ VCB in OHCs.

The authors develop the study model and hypothesis based on the service-dominant logic of value co-creation theory and social support (SS) literature. The survey data of 608 active OHCs users in China were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results revealed that SS positively affects members’ VCBs. Ethical aspects; Trust and ethical interaction (EI) partially mediate their relationships. In addition, community members’ current health status (CHS) negatively moderates the relationships between SS and VCB. From the findings, it becomes evident that only SS is not enough; developing an ethical environment in OHCs, i.e. trust and ethically rich interactions among members, significantly helps OHCs to promote co-creation. Also, the negative moderation of CHS findings provides novel insights when cramming health conditions.

Exploring the complex mechanism of co-creation in OHC, the authors illustrate the potential of service-dominant logic to create new theoretical insight for healthcare and provide the framework of co-creation with ethics for the first time. This will extend the application of ethics in healthcare services and offer a robust platform from which the understanding of drivers of members’ VCB can be advanced in the OHC context.

This paper aims to examine the impact of the COVID-19 infodemic on the public’s online information behaviour, offering insights critical for shaping effective informational responses in future public health emergencies.

This paper uses a structured online survey with 27 targeted questions using a five-point Likert scale to measure eight variables. Data analysis is conducted through structural equation modelling on 307 valid responses to rigorously test the research hypotheses.

This paper indicates that information quality significantly impacts the public’s capacity to select, share and use online information. Additionally, the comprehensibility of information plays a crucial role in shaping the public’s behaviours in terms of online information exchange and usage. The credibility of information sources emerges as a key determinant influencing the public’s online information selection, exchange and utilization behaviour. Moreover, social influence exerts a substantial effect on the public’s online information selection, acquisition, exchange and utilization behaviour. These findings highlight the presence of universality and sociality, mediation and guidance, as well as the purposefulness and selectivity performed by the public’s online information behaviour during an infodemic.

This paper introduces a novel research model for assessing the influence and identifies the patterns of the public’s online information behaviour during the COVID-19 infodemic. The findings have significant implications for developing strategies to tackle information dissemination challenges in future major public health emergencies.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors which influence male prisoners’ motivation for, and engagement in, exercise and subsequent healthy behaviours.

The first authors conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with male prisoners inside an English medium-security male prison. Interviews were recorded and transcribed, themes were identified using thematic analysis and a critical realist perspective applied to understand objective processes behind prisoners’ experiences and shared meanings of exercise and engaging in healthy behaviours in prison.

Emerging themes indicate that in the context of healthy behaviours male prisoners aspired to a masculine ideal that was characterised by a culture of either adaptive behaviours, or maladaptive behaviours. The former fostered an adaptive exercise culture which promoted psychological well-being through an autonomy-supportive environment, consequently internalising motivation and minimising perceived barriers to engaging in healthy behaviours. Conversely, a culture of maladaptive behaviours fostered a maladaptive exercise culture which led to negative psychological well-being, underpinned by external forms of motivation which emphasised barriers to engaging in healthy behaviours.

Findings emphasise the need for prisons to promote an internal perceived locus of control for male prisoners when engaging in healthy behaviours.

The authors adopt a rare interdisciplinary approach combining a psychological theory of motivation and criminological perspectives of prison culture to understand how best to minimise the impact of prisons as an institution on the psychological well-being of male prisoners.

During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, ubiquitous social media has become a primary channel for information dissemination, social interactions and recreational activities. However, it remains unclear how social media usage influences nonpharmaceutical preventive behavior of individuals in response to the pandemic. This paper aims to explore the impacts of social media on COVID-19 preventive behaviors based on the theoretical lens of empowerment.

In this paper, survey data has been collected from 739 social media users in China to conduct structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis.

The results indicate that social media empowers individuals in terms of knowledge seeking, knowledge sharing, socializing and entertainment to promote preventive behaviors at the individual level by increasing each person's perception of collective efficacy and social cohesion. Meanwhile, social cohesion negatively impacts the relationship between collective efficacy and individual preventive behavior.

This study provides insights regarding the role of social media in crisis response and examines the role of collective beliefs in the influencing mechanism of social media. The results presented herein can be used to guide government agencies seeking to control the COVID-19 pandemic.

The collection and use of personal medical information for mobile health (mHealth) service raise significant privacy concerns. In this context, this study aims to explore the privacy paradox and its impact from the perspective of paradox resolution.

Based on social support theory and privacy calculus theory, this study first studies the effect of social support on perceived benefits, and explores the moderating effect of perceived health status on the privacy trade-off process. Secondly, the study examines the path of “privacy concerns – disclosure intention – disclosure behavior” to verify the existence of the privacy paradox. Following this, based on rational choice theory, the rationality degree is introduced as a moderating variable to investigate both its impact on the central route and the strength of this impact on the privacy paradox.

Empirical results show that informational support and emotional support influence perceived benefits significantly. Perceived benefits significantly influence privacy concerns, and perceived health status has a significant positive moderating effect. The authors further find that there is a privacy paradox within the mHealth context, and the privacy paradox is moderated negatively by rationality degree. The findings indicate that the impact strength of the privacy paradox will decrease with increases in rationality degree.

The findings indicate that it is crucial to evaluate the privacy paradox and its impact from the perspective of paradox resolution.

This study offers a complete comprehension of the privacy paradox in mHealth and provides several valuable recommendations for enhancing both mHealth services and privacy controls.

Obesity is a significant public health issue. With obesity increasing worldwide, risk factors for obesity need to be better understood and require careful examination. This study aims to examine mental health as a risk factor for obesity using longitudinal data from Australia.

The main identification strategy relies on the recent death of a close friend and a serious injury or illness to a family member as exogenous shocks to mental health.

The authors’ preferred estimates, which account for the endogeneity of mental health, suggest that mental health has a significant negative impact on obesity. This result proves to be robust to a suite of sensitivity checks. Further investigations reveal that poor mental health leads to increased smoking, which also has an effect on obesity.

The study’s findings provide a new perspective on how good mental health helps curb obesity.

Patient-centric exchanges, a major type of Health Information Exchange (HIE), empower patients to aggregate and manage their health information. This exchange model helps patients access, modify and share their medical information with multiple healthcare organizations. Although existing studies examine patient engagement, more research is required to investigate patients' attitudes and willingness to play an active role in patient-centered information exchange. The study's main objective is to develop a model based on the belief-attitude-intention paradigm to empirically examine the effects of patients' attitudes toward engagement in care on their willingness to participate in patient-centric HIE.

The authors conducted an online survey study to identify the antecedents and consequences of patients' attitudes toward engagement in care. To empirically test the research model, the authors collected data from a national sample (n = 357) of individuals in the United States. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The proposed model categorizes the antecedents to patients' attitudes toward engagement in patient-related and healthcare system factors. The results show that patient-related factors (perceived health literacy and perceived coping ability) and health system factors (perceived experience with the healthcare organization and perceived patient-provider interaction) significantly shape patient attitude toward care management engagement. The results indicate that patients' attitudes toward engaging in their healthcare significantly contribute to their willingness to participate in medical information sharing through patient-centric HIE initiatives. Moreover, the authors’ findings also demonstrate that the link between patient engagement and willingness to participate in HIE is stronger for individuals who perceive lower levels of privacy and security concerns.

The authors validate the proposed model explaining patients' perceptions about their characteristics and the healthcare system significantly influence their attitude toward engaging in their care. This study also suggests that patients' favorable attitude toward engagement can bring patient-centric HIE efforts onto a path to success. The authors’ research attempts to shed light on the importance of patients' roles in adopting patient-centric HIE initiatives. Theoretical and practical contributions of this study are noticeable since they could result in a deeper understanding of the concept of patient engagement and how it may affect healthcare services in an evolving digital world. The authors’ findings can help healthcare organizations provide public citizen-centric services by introducing user-oriented approaches in healthcare delivery systems.

This study aims to investigate the process of developing loyalty in the Chinese mobile health community from the information seeking perspective.

A covariance-based structural equation model was developed to explore the mobile health community loyalty development process from information seeking perspective and tested with LISREL 9.30 for the 191 mobile health platform user samples.

The empirical results demonstrate that the information seeking perspective offers an interesting explanation for the mobile health community loyalty development process. All hypotheses in the proposed research model are supported except the relationship between privacy and trust. The two types of mobile health community loyalty—attitudal loyalty and behavioral loyalty are explained with 58 and 37% variance.

This paper has brought out the information seeking perspective in the loyalty formation process in mobile health community and identified several important constructs for this perspective for the loyalty formation process including information quality, communication with doctors and communication with patients.

This paper explores optimal service resource management strategy, a continuous challenge for health information service to enhance service performance, optimise service resource utilisation and deliver interactive health information service.

An adaptive optimal service resource management strategy was developed considering a value co-creation model in health information service with a focus on collaborative and interactive with users. The deep reinforcement learning algorithm was embedded in the Internet of Things (IoT)-based health information service system (I-HISS) to allocate service resources by controlling service provision and service adaptation based on user engagement behaviour. The simulation experiments were conducted to evaluate the significance of the proposed algorithm under different user reactions to the health information service.

The results indicate that the proposed service resource management strategy, considering user co-creation in the service delivery, process improved both the service provider’s business revenue and users' individual benefits.

The findings may facilitate the design and implementation of health information services that can achieve a high user service experience with low service operation costs.

This study is amongst the first to propose a service resource management model in I-HISS, considering the value co-creation of the user in the service-dominant logic. The novel artificial intelligence algorithm is developed using the deep reinforcement learning method to learn the adaptive service resource management strategy. The results emphasise user engagement in the health information service process.