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The ballooning health misinformation on social media raises grave concerns. Drawing upon the S-O-R (Stimulus-Organism-Response) model and the information processing literature, this study aims to explore (1) how social media health information seeking (S) affects health misinformation sharing intention (R) through the channel of health misperceptions (O) and (2) whether the mediation process would be contingent upon different information processing predispositions.

Data were collected from a survey comprising 388 respondents from the Chinese middle-aged or above group, one of China's most susceptible populations to health misinformation. Standard multiple linear regression models and the PROCESS Macro were adopted to examine the direct effect and the moderated mediation model.

Results bolstered the S-O-R-based mechanism, in which health misperceptions mediated social media health information seeking's effect on health misinformation sharing intention. As an indicator of analytical information processing, need for cognition (NFC) failed to moderate the mediation process. Contrarily, faith in intuition (FI), an indicator reflecting intuitive information processing, served as a significant moderator. The positive association between social media health information seeking and misperceptions was stronger among respondents with low FI.

This study sheds light on health misinformation sharing research by bridging health information seeking, information internalization and information sharing. Moreover, the authors extended the S-O-R model by integrating information processing predispositions, which differs this study from previous literature and advances the extant understanding of how information processing styles work in the face of online health misinformation. The particular age group and the Chinese context further inform context-specific implications regarding online health misinformation regulation.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-04-2023-0157.

Despite widespread recognition of the importance of mindfulness in organizational science literature, little is known about how mindfulness motivates individuals to configure information processing and team member exchange relationships to increase creative process engagement. Drawing on motivated information processing theory, this study conceptualizes and empirically examines whether and how mindfulness motivates individuals toward creative process engagement.

The authors collected data through an online survey from 311 respondents working in the Research and Development (R&D) departments of organizations in multiple industries in Pakistan. For analytical purposes, the authors have applied the structural equation modeling technique.

This study advances a different view of individual mindfulness on the creative process engagement in the following ways. First, mindfulness enables individuals to self-regulate in specific situations and become effective in fostering creative process engagement. Second, this study extends research on relational information processing by linking it to mindfulness and creative process engagement. Relational information processing partially mediates the relationship between mindfulness and creative process engagement. Third, this study highlights that mindfulness motivates individuals to focus more on developing quality working relationships, but they seem less willing to participate in idea generation and problem-solving solutions.

The study findings provide implications for research on mindfulness, creativity and motivated information processing to enhance individuals’ creative process engagements. The authors also discuss the implications for executives on the relational and creative benefits of mindfulness.

Disinformation on social media is a serious issue. This study examines the effects of disinformation on COVID-19 vaccination decision-making to understand how social media users make healthcare decisions when disinformation is presented in their social media feeds. It examines trust in post owners as a moderator on the relationship between information types (i.e. disinformation and factual information) and vaccination decision-making.

This study conducts a scenario-based web survey experiment to collect extensive survey data from social media users.

This study reveals that information types differently affect social media users' COVID-19 vaccination decision-making and finds a moderating effect of trust in post owners on the relationship between information types and vaccination decision-making. For those who have a high degree of trust in post owners, the effect of information types on vaccination decision-making becomes large. In contrast, information types do not affect the decision-making of those who have a very low degree of trust in post owners. Besides, identification and compliance are found to affect trust in post owners.

This study contributes to the literature on online disinformation and individual healthcare decision-making by demonstrating the effect of disinformation on vaccination decision-making and providing empirical evidence on how trust in post owners impacts the effects of information types on vaccination decision-making. This study focuses on trust in post owners, unlike prior studies that focus on trust in information or social media platforms.

The main purpose of the study was to synthesise the role of COVID-19 social media messages and indigenous religious beliefs on public health promotion initiatives among rural consumers in Zimbabwe.

A qualitative approach was adopted. Population consisting of 15 interviews and six focus groups was purposively sampled from Manicaland, Mashonaland Central and Masvingo provinces in Zimbabwe. A thematic approach was used to present and analyse the data.

Rural consumers believed WhatsApp messages posted by people whom they know or influential personnel like health workers. Credibility of WhatsApp messages was enhanced through its ability to send videos and audios. Teachings and indoctrination by indigenous churches and misinformation were found to be an impediment in believing COVID-19 WhatsApp messages and vaccination by rural consumers. Faith healers in indigenous churches used various practices and artefacts like holy water, stone pebbles, clay pots, flags and wooden rods to pray and treat patients suffering from COVID-19 and other ailments.

Social media messages, religious teachings and indoctrination may be a hindrance to rural consumers in adopting government public health promotion initiatives; hence, public health professionals need prior emic understanding and co-option of local leadership in vaccination campaigns.

This study outstretches the theoretical landscape in consumer behaviour and also practical contribution to health practitioners and marketers on breaking indigenous religious barriers and social media misconceptions on vaccination uptake through promotional strategies earmarked for rural consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the practices that owners of public profiles in social networking sites can leverage to actively build online reputation and to evaluate the impact of the adoption of such practices on the initial formation of trust toward these individuals when they are presented as new virtual work partners.

A theoretical model was developed and an experiment with 233 participants was utilized to assess the model using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results suggest that individuals can build their online reputations in public profiles of social networking sites via a series of practices of self-disclosure of information and that the adoption of these practices has significant effects on the initial formation of trust toward the profile owner in virtual work contexts. Categorization mechanisms such as stereotyping, unit grouping and reputation categorization have been found to contribute to the initial formation of trust, both from an affect and cognition-based perspectives.

Little is known about the information disclosure practices in public profiles of social networking sites that new work partners can adopt to facilitate the formation of trust between them before they start working together. This study has contributed to the existing body of literature by clarifying these practices and the relative importance of online reputation to the initial formation of trust during the outset of a new virtual work relationship.

Multiple topics often exist on social media platforms that compete for users' attention. To explore how users’ attention transfers in the context of multitopic competition can help us understand the development pattern of the public attention.

This study proposes the prediction model for the attention transfer behavior of social media users in the context of multitopic competition and reveals the important influencing factors of users' attention transfer. Microblogging features are selected from the dimensions of users, time, topics and competitiveness. The microblogging posts on eight topic categories from Sina Weibo, the most popular microblogging platform in China, are used for empirical analysis. A novel indicator named transfer tendency of a feature value is proposed to identify the important factors for attention transfer.

The accuracy of the prediction model based on Light GBM reaches 91%. It is found that user features are the most important for the attention transfer of microblogging users among all the features. The conditions of attention transfer in all aspects are also revealed.

The findings can help governments and enterprises understand the competition mechanism among multiple topics and improve their ability to cope with public opinions in the complex environment.

Drawing on social information processing theory (SIP), this paper examines whether and how humble leadership affects employees' service improvisation (ESI) in the hospitality industry. Further, the study investigates the mediating role of psychological safety and the moderating role of creative self-efficacy (CSE).

To test the proposed relationships, the study adopts a cross-sectional design, administering questionnaires to 456 frontline staff in Egypt’s hospitality industry across three main sectors: restaurants, hotels and travel agencies. SPSS 27 and AMOS 22 were used for statistical analysis.

The study reveals a positive relationship between humble leadership and ESI, partially mediated by psychological safety. Furthermore, CSE not only strengthens the relationship between psychological safety and ESI but also enhances the indirect effect of humble leadership on ESI via psychological safety.

The study offers valuable insights for practitioners in the hospitality industry. To boost ESI, organizations can incorporate humble leadership attributes into their leadership development programs. Fostering a psychologically safe workplace would facilitate the positive impact of humble leadership on ESI. Recognizing CSE as a pivotal moderator underscores the importance of strategically selecting and developing employees with high CSE. These insights aim to cultivate a more service-oriented and effective workforce in the hospitality industry.

This study significantly contributes to leadership research in the hospitality industry by uncovering a previously unexplored link between humble leadership and ESI. Exploring psychological safety as a mediator and CSE as a moderator enhances our comprehension of how and when humble leadership influences ESI.

Motivating users to self-disclose online is significant to the long-term development of social media. Therefore, research on emotional disclosure, a significant form of self-disclosure, is required. By developing a stimulus-organism-response model, this study aims to investigate the mechanisms by which the social media environment affects users' online emotional disclosure.

This paper proposes two dimensions of social media environments, the online interpersonal environment (tie strength and network size) and the online information environment (self-reference). They are hypothesized to stimulate users' internal psychological needs (image management and emotional expression) which in turn will influence their emotional disclosure intentions. Using data from 489 users of WeChat Moments, the authors conduct partial least squares analysis to validate the research model.

The findings show that users' intrinsic psychological needs are stimulated by social media environments, but network size is not correlated with the need for emotional expression. The user's need for emotional expression promotes both positive and negative emotional disclosure intentions. The need for image management has a positive impact on positive emotion disclosure intentions but has a negative impact on negative emotion disclosure intentions.

This study contributes to the understanding of online emotional disclosure. It can also help social media managers create efficient plans to encourage users to create content.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-04-2022-0245.

This paper seeks to examine how leaders shape employee creativity by using interpersonal emotion management (IEM) strategies. Drawing on the social information processing (SIP) theory, the authors argue that psychological safety translates leader problem-focused IEM into employee creativity, an impact which is moderated by organizational justice.

Data were collected in two waves from 201 employees and their leaders in China. Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

Leader problem-focused IEM is positively related to employee creativity, and this relationship is mediated by psychological safety. Organizational justice positively moderates the relationship between leader problem-focused IEM and psychological safety as well as the indirect relationship between leader problem-focused IEM and employee creativity via psychological safety.

This paper identifies a novel and useful predictor of employee creativity from the perspective of leader problem-focused IEM and provides practical insights for organizations regarding ways of improving employee creativity.

The purpose of this study is to examine the underlying mechanisms of exploitative innovation and exploratory innovation between social media usage and organizational agility, and elucidate the moderating role of learning goal orientation (LGO) in the above relationships, based on adaptive structuration theory (AST).

Based on a multiple-respondent matched survey of 334 Chinese e-commerce firms, authors employed structural equation modeling to examine the correlations among social media usage, exploitative innovation, exploratory innovation and organizational agility. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to examine the moderating role of LGO.

This study's empirical findings demonstrate that exploitative innovation and exploratory innovation mediate the relationship between social media usage and organizational agility in different ways. Further, LGO positively moderates the relationship between social media usage for customer acquisition and exploratory innovation, as well as the relationship between social media usage for customer relationship and exploitative innovation.

Firms are advised to leverage different types of social media usage to facilitate exploitative innovation and exploratory innovation and promote organizational agility. In addition, LGO within a firm should be established to enhance the effects of social media usage on exploitative innovation and exploratory innovation.

This study adds to the literature on social media usage by proposing and examining exploitative innovation and exploratory innovation as explanatory mechanisms to facilitate organizational agility. This study further identifies LGO as a boundary condition of social media usage's effect on exploitative innovation and exploratory innovation. By contextualizing social media as advanced information technology, this study contributes to the contextualization of AST in the social media context.