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This study investigated the impact of conspiracy beliefs on fear of Covid-19 and health protective behavior of university students in Pakistan.

A cross-sectional survey using an online questionnaire was conducted at three universities in Punjab (e.g. two public sectors and one private sector) with permission from concerned authorities for data collection. A total of 374 responses were received that were analyzed by applying both descriptive and inferential statistics.

The results indicated the prevalence of conspiracy beliefs and fear of Covid-19 among university students of two public sector universities and one private sector university. Furthermore, the conspiracy beliefs of university students predicted their fear of Covid-19. However, conspiracy beliefs did not predict the health protective behavior of university students.

These results had serious implications for public health in Pakistan demonstrating the critical need for health education and promotion as individual preparedness along with system preparedness is essential to combat Covid-19 pandemic and infodemic. These results are useful for policymakers, healthcare professionals, university administration and library staff for making evidence-based decisions toward health education and promotion related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

It is hoped that the present study would make an invaluable contribution to existing research on promotional health in general and the role of conspiracy beliefs in putting public health at risk in particular as limited studies have been published so far.

This study aims to investigate the impact of employees’ engagement in government social media (GSM) on their cybersecurity compliance attitude, protection motivation and protective behavior, thereby contributing to effective cybersecurity practices at organizations.

A quantitative cross-sectional field survey was conducted to collect primary data in big cities and large provinces in Vietnam. The final data set of 323 responses was analyzed using the partial least squares-structural equation modeling approach to interpret the results and test research hypotheses.

Engagement in GSM positively influences employees’ cybersecurity compliance attitude (ATT). Perceived threat vulnerability and response efficacy also contribute to a positive compliance attitude, although self-efficacy has a negative impact. Moreover, the cybersecurity compliance ATT significantly explains the information protection motivation, which in turn influences employee protective behaviors. However, the relationship between compliance attitude and protective behaviors is weak, unlike previous studies that found a strong correlation.

Although recent studies have explored specific information security practices in corporate and home contexts, the influence of GSM on individuals’ cybersecurity behaviors has received limited attention because of its novelty. This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by investigating the impact of GSM on cybersecurity behaviors. This study provides significant contributions to understanding social media’s effects of social media on individuals’ cultivation processes, by expanding upon the protective motivation theory and cultivation theory. The results lead to practical suggestions for organizational managers and policymakers so that they can enhance their understanding of the importance of cybersecurity, encourage the implementation of self-defense strategies and highlight the significance of threat and coping evaluations in influencing attitudes and motivations.

The purpose is to provide insight into the social media related information behaviours of Muslim women within Arab society, and to explore issues of societal constraint and control, and impact on behaviours.

The study conducted semi-structured interviews with Muslim women resident within the capital city of a nation within the Arabian Peninsula.

Social media provides the study participants' with an important source of information and social connection, and medium for personal expression. However, use is constrained within sociocultural boundaries, and monitored by husbands and/or male relatives. Pseudonym accounts and carefully managed privacy settings are used to circumvent boundaries and pursue needs, but not without risk of social transgression. The authors provide evidence of systematic marginalisation, but also of resilience and agency to overcome. Self-protective acts of secrecy and deception are employed to not only cope with small world life, but to also circumvent boundaries and move between social and information worlds.

Findings should not be considered representative of Muslim women as a whole as Muslim women are not a homogenous group, and Arabian Peninsula nations variously more conservative or liberal than others.

Findings contribute to practical and conceptual understanding of digital literacy with implications for education programmes including social, moral and intellectual aspects.

Findings contribute to conceptual and practical understanding of information poverty, evidencing structural inequalities as a major contributory factor, and that self-protective information behaviours, often considered reductive, can also be expansive in nature.

The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of the information behaviours of prisoners, providing insight into their information needs and information-seeking preferences, and the factors influencing their behaviours; to inform education and rehabilitation programmes.

The paper is an in-depth qualitative study. The theoretical framework was provided via Chatman’s (1996) concepts of information poverty. Participants were adult male prisoners in a Scottish maximum security prison, and prison staff. Data collection method was semi-structured interviews.

Prisoners have a broad range of information needs, many sensitive and many unmet. Interpersonal information sources are predominantly used due to a combination of natural preference and restricted access to other information sources. Issues of stigma and trust influence information behaviours. Further issues include restrictive social norms, and disinformation to incite violence. A significant degree of risk is therefore inherent within interpersonal information interactions, fostering self-protective acts of secrecy and deception amongst prisoners. Unmet emotional needs appear particularly problematic.

The paper highlights the need for further research exploring issues of unmet emotional needs in prisoners; in particular, assistive methods of need recognition and support in the problematic context.

The paper identifies significant unmet information needs in prisoners that impact upon their ability to cope with incarceration, and prepare for successful release and reintegration.

The paper addresses an understudied group of significant societal concern and advances the understanding of information need in context, providing insight into unmet needs and issues of affect in the incarcerated small world context.

This paper aims that mobile health (mHealth) applications have emerged as a key tool to support public health. However, there are only a few studies examining the influences of health-related ascribes on continuance intention to use mHealth apps and how these influences are contingent on gender in the mHealth app using context.

This study takes the protection motivation theory as a theoretical framework to examine the ordered relationship between threat and coping appraisals and their impacts on continuance intention to use mHealth apps. In addition, this study further extends the literature on gender differences into the mHealth app's context to investigate the moderating role of gender. The suggested hypotheses are confirmed by a structural equation modeling approach and multigroup investigation employing survey data of 345 users of Spring Rain Doctor in China, a typical mHealth app.

The findings suggest that the impact of perceived disease threat on user's continuance intention is mediated entirely by coping appraisals. Furthermore, the three coping appraisals' impacts are contingent upon gender. Specifically, response efficacy is more crucial for male users in forecasting continuance intention, whereas self-efficacy and response cost have a more salient influence on continuance intention for female users.

This study examines the ordered influences of threat and coping appraisal, moderated by gender, on continuance intention on use mHealth apps. These findings could contribute to relevant theoretical and practical implications.

This paper aims to understand how experience with the fringe effects of a cyclone influences perception of cyclone severity. Understanding how certain types of experience influences risk perception should help to clarify why there is an unclear link between experience and risk perception within the existing literature.

A total of 155 respondents with fringe cyclone experience were recruited to fill in a closed-ended question survey. The survey was designed to assess perceptions of a previous cyclone and future cyclone severity.

Most respondents who had experienced the fringe effects of a cyclone overestimated the wind speed in their location. Respondents who overestimated previous cyclone wind speed also predicted less damage from future Category 5 cyclones.

This research indicates that overestimating the severity of past cyclones can have a detrimental effect on how people predict damage due to high category cyclones.

The findings suggest that people with fringe cyclone experience need additional information to help reshape their perceptions of cyclone severity.

This paper provides a unique perspective on the relationship between experience and risk perception by demonstrating that experience on the fringe of a cyclone has a negative influence on risk perception.

The purpose of this paper is to evidence and better understand adolescent information behaviours in disadvantaged and disengaged circumstances, and explore issues of social integration.

Interdisciplinary theoretical framework bringing together theories of information behaviour with theories of social capital. Mixed method design incorporating observation, interviews, and focus group conducted in areas of multiple deprivations. Participants’ young people aged 16-19 not in education, employment or training (NEET); and their support workers.

Heightened access and internalised behavioural barriers found beyond those common to the general adolescent population, the former influenced by technology and literacy issues, the latter by social structures and norms. There is evidence suggestive of deception, risk-taking, secrecy, and situational relevance in information behaviours, and a reliance on bonding social capital characteristically exclusive and inward facing. Low levels of literacy and self-efficacy are significant interrelated issues, with NEET youth dependent upon support workers when seeking and processing information, and demonstrating passive non-motivated information behaviours often abandoned.

Highlights the need for further interdisciplinary research to explore complex relations between social and affective factors, and that seeks to both understand and influence information behaviours in disadvantaged and disengaged circumstances.

Remedial literacy education recommended as an immediate priority for public and third sector agencies.

First study of adolescent information behaviours in disadvantaged and disengaged circumstances. Novel interdisciplinary theoretical framework evidences and draws attention to understudied and enduring information poverty issues of significant societal concern, potentially consigning a significant proportion of the youth population to a stratified existence within an impoverished (small) information world. Sets a focused interdisciplinary research agenda.

This study aims to identify the implications of security behaviour determinants for security management to propose respective guidelines which can be integrated with current security management practices, including those following the widely adopted information security standards ISO 27001, 27002, 27003 and 27005.

Based on an exhaustive analysis of related literature, the authors identify critical factors influencing employee security behaviour and ISP compliance. The authors use these factors to perform a gap analysis of widely adopted information security standards ISO 27001, 27002, 27003 and 27005 and identify issues not covered or only partially addressed. Drawing on the implications of security behaviour determinants and the identified gaps, the authors provide guidelines which can enhance security management practices.

The authors uncover the factors shaping security behaviour barely or partly considered in the ISO information security standards ISO 27001, 27002, 27003 and 27005, including top management participation, accommodating individual characteristics, embracing the cultural context, encouraging employees to comply out of habit and considering the cost of compliance. Furthermore, the authors provide guidelines to security managers on enhancing their security management practices when implementing the above ISO Standards.

This study offers guidelines on how to create and design security management practices whilst implementing ISO standards (ISO 27001, ISO 27002, ISO 27003, ISO 27005) so as to enhance ISP compliance.

This study analyses the role and implications of security behaviour determinants, discusses discrepancies and conflicting findings in related literature, provides a gap analysis of commonly used information security standards (ISO 27001, 27002, 27003 and 27005) and proposes guidelines on enhancing security management practices towards improving ISP compliance.

The purpose of this study is to explore the information behaviours of socioeconomically disadvantaged young first-time mothers, an understudied and at-risk group (health and well-being).

Questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with 39 young mothers (aged up to 25 years of age) from UK areas of multiple deprivations.

Our participants' preferred sources of information are interpersonal sources with which they have formed close supportive relationships. Support groups are important sources of interpersonal connection, but young mothers are reluctant to attend groups involving older mothers. With the exception of support group staff and health visitors, institutional and professional information sources are used very little. Societal stigma is a significant issue influencing behaviours, but issues of institutional bureaucracy, information overload, conflicting information and practical access are also reported. A further key factor influencing behaviour is self-identity.

Findings should not be considered representative of young mothers as a whole as not all young mothers are disadvantaged. As our participants identified as ethnically white, findings also cannot speak to the additional barriers experienced by women of colour. Further studies with further population groups are recommended. More broadly, further studies exploring the influence of self-identity on people's information behaviours are also recommended.

Findings provide practical direction for health and welfare services, and public libraries, to better support young mothers.

Findings contribute to conceptual and practical understanding of information poverty in the socio-ecological context. Findings also evidence the role of self-identity in shaping people's information behaviours.

The purpose of this paper is to describe information seeking and use (ISU) within the context of minimalist lifestyles and connect characteristics of living with less to theories of information poverty and resilience.

Naturalistic methods of inquiry describe minimalist lifestyles in a remote, rural context through semi-structured interviews with 24 adults. Environmental scanning and visual methods extended data collection retrospectively and longitudinally to span almost 118 years of community history. Qualitative thematic coding and analysis proceeded inductively and reflexively.

Living minimally in this environment results in adaptive strategies that compensate for lack of resources in general, and information resources specifically. Positive psycho-social attitudes such as optimism, creativity, curiosity, resourcefulness, and self-sufficiency continue to be important factors in developing resilience in information seeking practices.

Information poverty is usually defined relatively, and often in relation to formal, macro-level environments. Focussing attention on informal, local level ISU reveals alternate varieties of knowledge, ways of knowing and characteristics that create information resilience in the face of sometimes profound deficits.

Highlights of positive aspects to ISU in this remote, rural context will be of interest to researchers and practitioners serving rural library systems.

This study provides an historical and contemporary glimpse into the ISU patterns of a previously unexamined population and context, those who live minimalist lifestyles in a remote and rural location.