Defense Information Insufficiency and Biased Information Use Behavior: Extending the Risk Information Seeking and Processing Model

Abstract

Controversies have surrounded the COVID-19 pandemic. People encountering COVID-19-related opinions that oppose their own are likely to find their deeply held beliefs questioned and their personal integrity threatened, which can compel them into defensiveness. Consequently, to serve the goal of defending their beliefs, they might seek and process COVID-19 information in ways that are consistent with their beliefs. To examine risk information seeking and processing for this defensive informational goal, we applied the risk information seeking and processing model (Griffin, Dunwoody, & Yang, 2013), and extended it by (1) systematically explicating the concept of defense information insufficiency (the perceived information needed to preserve one’s enduring beliefs) and (2) exploring the antecedents and effects of defense information insufficiency. We conducted an online survey of Hong Kong adults aged 18 years and older and collected 830 responses. The findings showed that fear and informational subjective norms increased defense information insufficiency, which influenced the engagement in selective risk information use behavior. Informational subjective norms had also positively influenced selective information use. As a result, people were likely to be exposed to homogeneous information. Implications on polarization are discussed.

The novel coronavirus, COVID-19, caused a global pandemic resulting in this century’s unprecedented death tolls and a devastating societal and economic disruption. Rather than uniting people to fight the deadly virus as a common enemy of all humanity, the pandemic further escalated longstanding and harsh political and societal polarizations in many countries (Carothers & O’Donohue, 2020). Driven by deep-seated differences in ideological values and beliefs, the COVID-19 pandemic became a highly divisive issue imbued with political implications (Rothgerer et al., 2020).

This pandemic’s politicization and polarization received increasing scholarly attention because of the potential negative consequences. Although differences in core values and beliefs are inevitable, people with strong ideological values and beliefs are less willing to socialize with their counterparts (Kubin & von Sikorski, 2021). It is highly unlikely to settle political and social disputes in a civil and democratic manner without engaging in dialogue and finding mutual understanding. Moreover, in the context of promoting public health, politicization and polarization are counterproductive to the public’s health, endangering the efforts of health institutions to combat the pandemic, which requires every society member to participate. Thus, in the face of such severe civic and public health consequences, it is essential to understand the factors that contribute to politicization and polarization. In addition, the ways individuals handle risk information—such as seeking, avoiding, or processing information about a hazard—may also play a role in resolving or contributing to these issues.

Risk information seeking and avoidance are important to examine because the specific information people collect or avoid can readily represent their diverse or biased perspectives about a health issue such as COVID-19. Furthermore, how people process information can affect the persistence of a health attitude and behavior over time (Griffin et al., 2013). According to the Risk Information Seeking and Processing (RISP) model (Griffin et al., 2013), people’s motives and their corresponding informational goals influence how they seek, avoid, and process risk information. Thus, to understand individuals’ risk information use behavior and the roles that motives and goals play, we employed the RISP model.

The RISP model is a theoretical framework that explains how sociopsychological and communication factors influence individuals’ risk information seeking, avoidance, and processing (Griffin et al., 2013). RISP derives much of its substance directly from the Heuristic Systematic Model (HSM) of information processing (Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989). According to the multimotive perspective of HSM, people’s processing motives and their corresponding goals can be categorized into three broad types: defense, accuracy, and impression. Defense motive refers to one’s desire to form and defend judgments that are congruent with one’s self-definitional beliefs. Accuracy motive refers to the desire to hold an objective as well as a valid judgment of an object, a person, or an event. Impression motive refers to the desire to achieve positive interpersonal outcomes when expressing a given judgment in a particular social situation. Each motive engenders a corresponding processing goal. In the case of defense motive, which is the focus of this study, the corresponding goal is to assess whether message contents confirm or disconfirm a preferred attitudinal position, based on one’s self-definitional beliefs (Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1996).

Based on the HSM, the RISP model (Griffin et al., 2013) argues that defense motive orients individuals to how much risk information they themselves need to defend their risk judgments to sustain their self-definitional beliefs (i.e., defense information insufficiency). Self-definitional beliefs, which refer to an individual’s enduring core values, belief system, worldview, social identity, ideology, and attitudes that support their vested material interests, often relate to people’s sense of self (Chaiken, Giner-Sorolla, & Chen, 1996). As for this pandemic, controversies surrounding its health risks, such as face mask mandates and vaccine public access passes, seem to have threatened some people’s core values and belief systems related to one’s right to act without government control (Iosifyan, Arina, & Nikolaeva, 2023; Jonas, Schulz-Hardt, & Frey, 2005).

When people encounter COVID-19-related arguments and opinions in opposition to their own, some are likely to find their self-definitional beliefs are being questioned and potentially challenged (Jonas et al., 2005). Because people often closely tie self-definitional beliefs to their sense of self, they are likely to consider that their personal integrity and well-being are threatened (Ledgerwood, Callahan, & Chaiken, 2014), which can compel them to defend themselves. Therefore, the RISP model maintains that people with such a defensive goal will seek, avoid, and process risk information in a biased manner to achieve their defensive informational goal (Griffin et al., 2013).

Although the RISP model has the potential to explain the underlying process of how people engage in biased and selective risk information use behavior, little research has been done in this area. To date, research employing the RISP framework has primarily focused on people’s use of risk information for the purpose of forming accurate judgments (“accuracy goals”) about a health hazard that causes harm to their physical health and well-being (Griffin et al., 2013). However, individuals’ seeking and processing information to defend their risk judgments have been largely overlooked. According to the RISP model (Griffin et al., 2013), defense information insufficiency is the key motivator that drives risk information seeking and processing in the context of sustaining self-definitional beliefs. Nevertheless, this key motivator has not yet been systematically conceptualized. Therefore, the purpose of our threefold study is to address these research gaps: (1) to explicate the concept of defense information insufficiency as a key motivator of biased risk information use behavior in the context of sustaining self-definitional beliefs; (2) to examine biased risk information seeking, avoidance, and processing in the case of COVID-19; and (3) to examine how people’s biased information use behavior influences their exposure to homogeneous risk information. To our knowledge, this study’s expansive conceptualization of defense information insufficiency is the first such theory building endeavor related to this concept in RISP research. Therefore, our study’s theoretical contribution not only advances the application of the RISP model beyond pursuing the goal of forming an accurate mental representation of a health hazard and making valid judgments to deal with that hazard but it also extends the model’s explanatory capacity to the risk related context of sustaining self-definitional beliefs.

Using Hong Kong’s COVID-19 pandemic as a case study, this research also provides a better understanding of the relationship between biased risk information use and the exposure to homogeneous risk information. Such a relationship sheds light on its potential implication of polarization. By untangling the process of people’s biased risk information use behavior, our study also provides health communicators and risk communication managers practical implications for risk message design.

Defense Information Insufficiency and the RISP Model

The RISP model conceives information insufficiency and informational subjective norms as the two key motivational forces of people’s risk information seeking and processing behavior (see Figure 1). The model hypothesizes that people’s affective responses, based on their cognitive appraisal of an array of hazard characteristics of a risk, will influence their perceived need for risk information (i.e., information insufficiency). The model also postulates that normative pressure (i.e., informational subjective norms) will influence people’s information insufficiency. Both information insufficiency and informational subjective norms, in turn, shape people’s risk information seeking, avoidance, and processing behavior. In the following, we explicate the concept of information insufficiency in the context of defending self-definitional beliefs.

The concept of information insufficiency originates from the HSM’s sufficiency principle (Chaiken et al., 1996). To explain people’s choice of processing modes and manner, the sufficiency principle outlines the dynamic of three interrelated conceptual components: processing motives and goals, sufficiency, and judgmental confidence. Specifically, the principle maintains that people must strike a balance between minimizing their processing effort and obtaining sufficient confidence in their judgment to attain their processing goals (Chen, Shechter, & Chaiken, 1996). Therefore, heuristic processing is often the default mode, but when this is insufficient for making a confident judgment toward the desired goal, systematic processing is used.

Based on HSM’s sufficiency principle, the RISP model posits that information insufficiency is the individual’s subjectively perceived gap between what he or she knows (i.e., current knowledge) about a given risk topic and the level of information he or she desires to have about it (i.e., sufficiency threshold) in order to achieve a personal goal and make confident judgments, as outlined by Griffin, Neuwirth, Dunwoody, and Giese (2004). The greater the perceptual gap between current knowledge and sufficiency threshold the greater the perceived need for risk information, which motivates people to effortfully seek and systematically process risk information, i.e., comprehensively and analytically.

Motive and the correspondent informational goal are the essential defining elements in the concept of information insufficiency (Griffin, Dunwoody, & Yang, 2004). Information insufficiency also embraces the idea that people make a compromise between achieving their informational goals and minimizing their effort for risk information seeking (avoidance) and processing. Three types of information insufficiency can be differentiated: defense information insufficiency, accuracy information insufficiency, and impression information insufficiency (Griffin et al., 2013). Defense information insufficiency¹ is depicted as the perceived amount of risk information people feel they need to confidently form and defend risk judgments that are congruent with their self-definitional beliefs. Accuracy information insufficiency is characterized as the perceived amount of risk information people feel they need to have (i.e., the gap between sufficiency threshold and current knowledge) to achieve the goal of making realistic and reasonable judgments to satisfactorily protect themselves from the physical harms posed by a risk. Impression information insufficiency refers to the perceived amount of risk information people feel they need to have to express socially acceptable judgments that satisfy interpersonal needs in social encounters (Fung, Lai, & Griffin, 2024).

Accuracy information insufficiency has been most frequently examined in RISP studies. However, defense information insufficiency has been largely overlooked in the literature. In their seminal piece, Griffin and his colleagues (2004) emphasized that the concept of information insufficiency is adaptable to defense motive and its corresponding informational goal. Evidence in risk communication shows that people seek and process risk information for defensive concerns (e.g., Lu & Chu, 2023; Trumbo, 1999). Hence, the conceptualization of defense information insufficiency in the context of sustaining self-definitional beliefs is valuable to revisit, and the concept of defense information insufficiency is useful to understand people’s biased risk information use behavior. Following the RISP model’s propositions (see Figure 1), we review, below, the model’s components and provide rationales for the hypotheses and research questions.

The Influence of Perceived Hazard Characteristics on Affective Responses

The RISP model specifies an array of characteristics (i.e., perceived hazard characteristics) people employ to evaluate a hazard. Perceived hazard characteristics include risk judgment, institutional trust, personal control, and risk attribution. Fear and anger are common affective responses that result from individuals’ cognitive evaluation of hazard characteristics.

Risk judgment is the process of evaluating the potential harm that can result from exposure to a hazard (Griffin et al., 2013). It involves assessing the probability of the harm occurring (perceived susceptibility) and the magnitude of the harm caused by the hazard (perceived severity). The COVID-19 that claimed millions of lives could have increased risk perception and could have elicited strong emotional reactions such as fear (Slovic, 1987) during the 2021/2022 pandemic. Moreover, anger is related to events appraised as controllable, certain, and attributable to others (Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). When the risk becomes more threatening due to inadequate risk management, the increased risk perception may trigger people’s anger (Fung, Griffin, & Dunwoody, 2018). Thus, we posited the following hypotheses.

H1: Risk judgment will be positively related to (a) fear toward COVID-19 and (b) anger at the governmental risk management.

Institutional trust refers to the amount of trust an individual has in the ability of responsible agencies to prevent risks (Griffin et al., 2004). When people do not trust risk management agencies and institutions to perform their duties effectively, it can heighten their perception of risk (Slovic,1999). This distrust can also contribute to increased anxiety about the risk (ter Huurne & Gutteling, 2009) and provoke feelings of anger toward those authorities (Griffin, Neuwirth, Dunwoody, & Giese, 2008; ter Huurne & Gutteling, 2009). Trust in the authorities is particularly important when the risk is uncertain and difficult to control, as in the case of COVID-19. In Hong Kong, as the level of trust toward the government reached the lowest point in history (Wan, Ho, Wong, & Chiu, 2020); the public not only expressed their anger at the government’s COVID-19 regulatory measures (Lau, 2021) but they also communicated their doubts about the effectiveness of the policies intended to minimize their fear about their chance of being infected (Barron, 2020). We hypothesized the following.

H2: Institutional trust will be negatively related to (a) fear toward COVID-19 and (b) anger at the governmental risk management.

Personal control is defined as one’s sense of control over the risk or over the response to the risk (Griffin et al., 2013). When individuals perceive a deficiency in personal control, they tend to feel more helpless. This feeling is often reflected in their affective reactions the risk (Griffin et al., 2013). During the initial phase of the pandemic, this was evident in the widespread panic-buying, a societal response to the collective sense of diminished control over the spreading infection (Lufkin, 2020). Failure of risk management agencies to stabilize the supply of personal protective equipment (e.g., facemasks, disinfectants) could also have incited people’s anger at them (Bird, 2020). In line with existing evidence, we posited the following hypotheses.

H3: Personal control will be negatively related to (a) fear toward COVID-19 and (b) anger at the governmental risk management.

Risk attribution is defined as the extent to which people determine causal responsibility for hazardous outcomes (Griffin et al., 2008). Public health agencies are expected to take charge of managing threats to the population’s health (Siegrist, Cvetkovich, & Roth, 2000). When these authorities are seen as failing to prevent health harms that could have been avoided, the public may react fearfully, feeling unprotected and vulnerable to the health threat. RISP research shows that people who assessed that authorities managed natural disasters poorly felt angrier at the authorities than those who did not consider that the authorities did their job badly (Griffin et al., 2008). In the case of COVID-19 in Hong Kong, people were likely to experience anger toward the actions taken by their government and the World Health Organization (WHO) when they perceived that these two authorities’ management of the pandemic caused inflictions on the public (Cheung & Wong, 2020). Therefore, we posited the following hypotheses:

H4: Attribution of the increased public COVID-19 risk to responsible agencies’ risk management will be positively related to (a) fear toward COVID-19 and (b) anger at the governmental risk management.

The Influence of Affective Responses on Defense Information Insufficiency

Individuals’ overall experiences of fear toward COVID-19 and their anger toward governmental risk management may or may not increase their desire for information to defend their risk judgments, based on their self-definitional beliefs. Because of the multifaceted nature of COVID-19, individuals’ cognitive appraisals of the hazard characteristics of COVID-19 can produce various types of fear and anger. Some fears, for example, might arise from potential health consequences associated with the infection (Brooks et al., 2020), from financial instability associated with the lockdown (Alsharawy, Ball, Smith, & Spoon, 2021), or from loneliness associated with physical distancing measures (Hwang, Rabheru, Peisah, Reichman, & Ikeda, 2020). Some anger, for example, might arise from government’s ineffective management of the pandemic (e.g., responding too late or inefficiently) (Cheng, 2020), from policies causing unequal distribution of risk burden and compensation during the pandemic (Hayenhjelm, 2012), or from policies that prioritize political considerations over citizens’ interests (Barron, 2020).

Some types of fear and anger may threaten individuals’ self-definitional beliefs. For example, anti-Asian abuse and hate crimes are likely to pose a threat to Asians’ self-definitional beliefs (i.e., social identity, security). Faced with movement restrictions, policy mandate enforcement, and contact tracing implementation, people considered COVID-19 as a threat to personal focus values (e.g., independence, freedom) and openness values (e.g., self-direction, achievement) (Iosifyan et al., 2023). For people whose self-definitional beliefs are being undermined when facing COVID-19, feelings of fear and anger may give rise to greater desire for risk information that would validate and strengthen their self-definitional beliefs and their positions on COVID-19 related controversial issues (e.g., to find evidence to argue that Asians should not be discriminated against because of COVID-19, to find socially supportive information) (Lu & Chu, 2023; Venkatesan & Joshi, 2023).

In this study, we examine how individuals’ overall fear of COVID-19 and their overall anger with government’s approach to risk management may influence their sense of information (in)sufficiency for the purpose of defending their self-definitional beliefs. Thus far, research that employed the RISP model has examined only how the two emotions relate to accuracy-based information insufficiency. No RISP-based study has investigated how the two affective responses influence defense information insufficiency. Therefore, this study offered the following questions.

RQ1: Do (a) fear toward COVID-19 and (b) anger at the governmental risk management relate to defense information insufficiency?

The Influence of Defense Information Insufficiency on Goal-Driven and Biased Risk Information Use Behavior

The RISP model specifies three fundamental forms of information use behavior: information seeking, information avoidance, and information processing (Griffin et al., 1999). In the case of pursuing defensive informational goal, defense information seeking is defined as individuals’ volitional selection of information channels or messages embedded in any particular channel to render a risk judgment to support their self-definitional beliefs. In contrast, defense information avoidance is the intentional disregard of information that contradicts individuals’ self-definitional beliefs. Defense systematic processing involves a thorough, analytical evaluation of information based on how well it aligns with individuals’ self-definitional beliefs, whereas defense heuristic processing employs decision rules or mental shortcuts to judge information’s consistency with these self-definitional beliefs.

How might people’s defense motive and its corresponding informational goal affect their mode and manner of risk information seeking, avoidance, and processing? Based on the HSM (Bohner, Moskowitz, & Chaiken, 1995), when people consider how much information they actually have (i.e., current knowledge) and how much they need to have (i.e., sufficiency threshold), their motives and their informational goals play the role of setting and altering those levels of information. For instance, in the context of sustaining self-definitional beliefs, defense motive and its corresponding goal could prompt individuals to set a higher level of sufficiency threshold (or adjust their level of current knowledge downward) when they feel threatened by arguments that oppose their beliefs. Conversely, defense motive and its corresponding goal could prompt individuals to set a lower level of sufficiency threshold (or adjust their level of current knowledge upward) when they feel reassured by arguments that support their beliefs. In this sense, individuals’ defense motive and its corresponding informational goal shape the extent of risk information seeking and processing by shifting the size of the defense information insufficiency gap. Consistent with the multimotive perspective of HSM, the RISP model argues that defense heuristic processing is the default mode to close the defense information insufficiency gap. When defense heuristic mode is not able to close the gap, people employ defense systematic processing mode. Similarly, people engage in more active seeking and avoidance behavior to confidently defend their judgments based on their self-definitional beliefs.

Besides shaping the mode of risk information seeking and processing, individuals’ motives and its corresponding goals also govern the manner in which they seek (or avoid) and process risk information. Specifically, the defense-based informational goal is likely to orient individuals to seek (or avoid) and process risk information in a biased manner. The multimotive HSM views “processing mode and processing goal as orthogonal; heuristic and systematic processing occur in the service of individual’s processing goal, whatever that goal may be” (Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989, p. 235). In other words, people will employ both heuristic and systematic processing strategies to serve their goal. Because the defense-based informational goal orients people to assess whether the arguments are congruent with their self-definitional beliefs, defense-motivated individuals engaging in effortful (systematic) or superficial (heuristic) processing will select and evaluate only the facts, evidence, arguments, and informational cues that are congruent with their beliefs (Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1996).

RISP, like HSM, asserts that risk information seeking, avoidance, and processing behaviors function to serve people’s informational goals (Griffin et al., 2013). In the context of defending risk judgments based on self-definitional beliefs, risk information use behavior, oriented by defense goal, is characterized by selectivity (Griffin et al., 2013). As a result, defense information insufficiency would drive individuals to seek, avoid, and process risk information in a selective and biased manner to yield a judgment that sustains their self-definitional beliefs.

When individuals are faced with conflicting viewpoints on contentious issues that involve risk, such encounters can threaten their self-definitional beliefs (Chaiken et al., 1989). In the case of COVID-19 controversies, advocates of CoronaVac vaccine are likely to find that arguments against the vaccine undermine their sense of self because their own attitudes toward the vaccine are closely linked to their core belief of national interest in science and technology achievement (Mo et al., 2021; Xiao, 2020) and the ideology of nationalism (e.g., Yang, Chen, & Wei, 2023). Consequently, these advocates may perceive an increased need for information (i.e., defense information insufficiency) to confidently defend their risk judgment about the CoronaVac vaccine, based on their self-definitional beliefs. In defense of their judgment related to the vaccine, advocates are likely to selectively seek out CoronaVac vaccine information that aligns with their attitudes while selectively avoiding information that contradicts their attitude toward the vaccine.

Furthermore, to process CoronaVac vaccine information, advocates are likely to rely on heuristic cues (e.g., “Information must be false if it contradicts my belief”) to achieve sufficient confidence in their judgment to sustain their self-definitional beliefs; otherwise, they might engage in systematic processing by scrutinizing opposing information to hunt for flaws or to generate counterarguments. For example, when processing systematically, to defend their position by nullifying the validity of opposing evidence, advocates may criticize the data collection method of opinion polls against the CoronaVac vaccine.

Because risk information seeking, avoidance, and processing behaviors are expected to serve people’s informational goals (Griffin et al., 2013), we propose to complement the current measures of these behaviors by operationalizing a new set of them for the defense informational goal. Existing measures focus on seeking, avoiding, and processing risk information for an accuracy goal. Based on the literature, we argue that the defense informational goal and the selectivity characteristic should be directly reflected and explicitly stated as well in separate but commensurate measures of seeking, avoidance, and processing (e.g., “To back up my judgments about the contentious issues surrounding COVID-19, I selectively seek out information that aligns with my fundamental values and beliefs”). By measuring how risk information use relates to defense informational goals for each behavior, researchers should be able to distinguish how different seeking, avoidance, and processing behaviors serve people’s disparate informational goals.

Evidence supports that defense-driven individuals engage in biased and selective processing (e.g., Giner-Sorolla & Chaiken, 1997; Neuwirth, Frederick, & Mayo, 2002; Winter, Metzger, & Flanagin, 2016). When face mask wearing became a matter of political debate during the pandemic in the United States, people intentionally used attitude-congruent information to justify their decision (McKelvey, 2020). In another study, Nadler and colleagues (2021) interviewed 25 conservatives in the United States; some respondents reported that to avoid irritating and unpleasant experiences, they deliberately stayed away from news sources that were contradictory to their viewpoint.

To our knowledge, no RISP-based study has yet examined the relationship between defense information insufficiency and defense-oriented information seeking, avoidance, and processing. Therefore, we proposed the following questions.

RQ2: How does defense information insufficiency relate to (a) defense heuristic processing, (b) defense systematic processing, (c) defense information seeking, and (d) defense information avoidance?

The Influence of Informational Subjective Norms on Defense Information Insufficiency and Goal-Driven Risk Information Use

Informational subjective norms refer to perceived social expectations from significant others (e.g., spouse, siblings, relatives, close friends, supervisors) that one should learn about a risk (Griffin et al., 2013). According to the RISP model, informational subjective norms are conceived as a source of influence on defense information insufficiency. They are also conceived as another motivational force to drive people’s risk information use behavior.

When people perceive normative pressure to stay updated about the COVID-19 information, they are likely to encounter some risk information that might render support to their self-definitional beliefs as well as other information that could pose threats to their beliefs. COVID-19 is recognized as an “infodemic,” in which digital and physical environments were flooded with a plethora of various types of information during the outbreak (WHO, 2023). For example, a person using the vaccine passport (i.e., proof of vaccination) for public access (e.g., to restaurants, theaters) and events (e.g., sports), and who is being pressured by significant others to keep up-to-date about COVID-19 information, might happen to read or see an online interview of government officials who support using the vaccine passport to maintain public health safety. People who hold the core values of privacy and freedom are likely to find that the message from that interview threatens their self-definitional belief. As a result, they are likely to desire more information to validate their self-definitional belief, which may thus increase defense information insufficiency. Furthermore, they are more likely to be prompted to seek attitude-congruent risk information, to avoid attitude-incongruent risk information, and to process information that is consistent with their preferred attitude to defend the risk judgments based on their self-definitional beliefs. Conversely, those people might also happen to watch a TV show where elected officials, who are concerned about civil liberties, discuss their opposition to using the vaccine passport. This is less likely to increase those viewers’ desire for more information to defend their self-definitional belief. When people encounter self-definitional supportive arguments, they are less likely to engage in defensive information seeking, avoidance, and processing strategies.

How likely people are to come across risk information that threatens their self-definitional beliefs when they are under normative pressure to learn about COVID-19 is unknown. Therefore, how informational subjective norms relate to defense information insufficiency and defense goal-oriented information use behaviors, respectively, are also unknown. Given that these relationships have yet to be explored in RISP-based studies, we posed the following questions.

RQ3: Do informational subjective norms relate to defense information insufficiency?

RQ4: How do informational subjective norms relate to (a) defense heuristic processing, (b) defense systematic processing, (c) defense information seeking, and (d) defense information avoidance?

The Influence of Biased Seeking and Avoidance on Attitude-Congruent Exposure

To shed insight on the issue of polarization surrounding health hazards, we examined the link between defense-oriented seeking and avoidance and attitude-congruent exposure. Specifically, we focused on whether defense-driven people who engage in selective and biased information seeking and avoidance increase their exposure to attitude-congruent risk information. To understand the issue of polarization surrounding health hazards, this query sheds light on whether people’s biased risk information use behavior would homogenize their risk information exposure. The literature on polarization shows that exposure to diversified information is crucial to alleviate a societal divide; although people may not agree with opposing arguments and evidence, exposure to attitudes of dissimilar information can afford them the opportunity to understand the perspectives and reasoning of those from the other side (Mutz, 2002). Such an understanding makes finding a common ground possible to resolve differences and to achieve an acceptable solution from both sides of a controversial issue (Mutz & Mondak, 2006). Besides, to prepare themselves for debunking, it is possible that people may be inclined to be exposed to attitude-incongruent risk information (Young, Tiedens, Jung, & Tsai, 2011). Conversely, exposure to only pro-attitudinal information is likely to push people from both sides further apart (Suk et al., 2020). Based on this argument, we posed the following questions.

RQ5: How do (a) defense information seeking and (b) defense information avoidance relate to attitude-congruent exposure?

Based on the RISP model and the arguments above, we visually illustrated the hypotheses and research questions in the hypothesized model in Figure 2.

Defense Motive and Hong Kong’s Sociopolitical Context During the Pandemic

Our study, conducted in Hong Kong, leveraged the city’s socio-political environment and pandemic controversies to explore the influence of defense information insufficiency on biased risk information use behavior and its potential implications on polarization.

Hong Kong’s societal and political polarization reached its historical high when the pandemic hit the city. Its political and societal rift lies in the attitude toward China’s communist government and the city’s democratization (Ma, 2017), which represent deep-seated differences in core values, beliefs, and social identity. Generally, Hong Kong’s political spectrum can be broadly divided into pro-government and pro-democracy camps (Lau & Kuan, 2000).²

Since the United Kingdom returned Hong Kong to China in 1997, the city has experienced several social movements and the society has become perniciously polarized (see Ma, 2017, for details). The 2019 anti-extradition movement, which stands as the most extensive, enduring, and radical demonstrations ever seen in the city, has resulted in unprecedented societal division and a profound mistrust in governmental institutions (Wan et al., 2020). Although the pandemic outbreak halted the protests, polarization influenced the public response toward COVID-19 policies, sparking controversies tied to differences in self-definitional beliefs among political camps.³

Since the beginning of the pandemic, highly contentious politics resulted in Hong Kong’s historically high societal divide, which complicated the city’s public health response (Wan et al., 2020). When people from both political camps encountered arguments that conflicted with their position in the COVID-19 controversies, they may have felt threatened because their underlying values, beliefs, ideology, social identity, and vested material interests were tied to their sense of self (Iosifyan et al., 2023; Ledgerwood et al., 2014). As a result, to sustain their self-definitional beliefs, they may have been prompted to defend their risk judgments. To confidently defend their risk judgments, they are likely to selectively seek attitude-consistent risk information, avoid attitude-inconsistent information, and process risk information in line with their self-definitional beliefs.

Method

Sample

The data⁴ were collected through a cross-sectional online survey from late December 2020 to early February 2021. The survey participants were recruited using an online panel maintained by an independent research organization. The panel consisted of adults aged 18 or older, residing in Hong Kong, and recruited on a voluntary basis. We sent a survey invitation and three reminders to all panel members throughout the data collection period. The questionnaire took about 25 minutes to complete, and a total of 830 completed responses were obtained.⁵Table 1 summarizes the demographics of the sample.

Measures

The correlations, descriptive statistics, and reliability of the variables are presented in Table 2. The detailed question item wording, measurement scales, sources of the scale, and scale construction procedures are presented in Supplementary Appendix A.

Risk judgment tapped into respondents’ perceived susceptibility to, and severity of, COVID-19. Respondents were asked to indicate their subjective evaluation of the likelihood and the severity of the infection.

Institutional trust examined the extent to which respondents have faith in the competence, care, and integrity of the Hong Kong government to manage the COVID-19 outbreaks, and their perceptions of whether the government’s pandemic related policies are in accordance with Hong Kong citizens’ public interest. Personal control tapped into individuals’ perceived ability to take control over the risks of COVID-19 to themselves and their family. Attribution to managing agencies asked respondents to indicate the extent to which the risk managing agencies were responsible for the unprecedented impact of the pandemic on daily living and the economy, at the local and global levels.

Two discrete emotions were used to measure affective responses. We asked how much fear the respondents experienced when facing the COVID-19 risks. Regarding how the Hong Kong government handled the virus outbreaks, we asked respondents how much anger they felt. Informational subjective norms asked respondents to indicate the extent to which they sensed pressure from their important others to stay on top of information about the COVID-19 risk.

Defense information insufficiency tapped into the respondents’ perceptual gap between (1) the level of knowledge they currently hold that helps them preserve their self-definitional beliefs surrounding the COVID-19 controversies (defense current knowledge) and (2) the level of knowledge they would need (defense sufficiency threshold) to adequately preserve their self-definitional beliefs surrounding the pandemic’s controversies. We modified the measures from Griffin et al. (2004). In the questionnaire, we first carefully defined for respondents what self-definitional beliefs are.⁶ We then asked respondents to indicate what their current level of knowledge is to make judgments to support their self-definitional beliefs regarding the COVID-19 controversies. Then, we asked the respondents to indicate the level of knowledge they would need to make judgments to support their self-definitional beliefs regarding the COVID-19 controversies (for strategies to ensure respondents’ understanding of self-definitional beliefs, see Footnote 6; for the procedure of how to construct defense information insufficiency variable, see Supplementary Appendix A).

Defense heuristic processing and defense systematic processing examined respondents’ level of processing and how the processing modes served their defense informational goal. As noted above, the operationalization of the two processing modes, in the measures, should manifest people’s defense goal and its closed-minded processing manner. To examine defense heuristic and systematic processing, we modified the measurement statements in Griffin et al. (2008) and Neuwirth et al. (2002) by specifying bias, selective processing, and goal pursuit (for question wording, see Supplementary Appendix A).

As with the design of the measure of defense processing, the selectivity and directional biases were emphasized when measuring defense information seeking and defense information avoidance. Modified from Griffin et al. (2008) and Yang and Kahlor (2013), the measurement statements assessed respondents’ level of agreement of biased selection in searching and avoiding COVID-19 information to serve the goal of defending risk judgments that preserve their self-definitional beliefs (for item wording, see Supplementary Appendix A).

Attitude-congruent exposure examined the extent to which respondents tend to choose ideologically consistent risk information (for variable construction, see Supplementary Appendix A). Control variables were comprised of age, gender, education level, and ideological orientation (for details, see Table 1).

Results

To analyze how well the model fit the data, we used maximum likelihood estimation with robust standard errors in Mplus 8.3. We first examined the measurement model, then followed with the structural model. Supplementary Appendix B presents the analytic strategy. As shown in Table 3, the measurement model revealed that the data achieved a good fit (for details, see Supplementary Appendix C) and that the structural model attained an acceptable fit. Figure 3 presents the structural model.

Results showed support for H1, which hypothesized a positive relationship between risk judgment and fear toward COVID-19 (H1a) and anger toward risk managing agencies (H1b), respectively. Supporting H2b, institutional trust was negatively related to anger. Contrary to H2a, it was not significantly related to fear. Supporting H3a, personal control was negatively related to fear. Contrary to H3b, it was not significantly related to anger. Attribution to risk managing agencies was positively related to fear (H4a) and anger (H4b).

A positive relationship existed between fear and defense information insufficiency (RQ1a), whereas anger was not significantly associated with defense information insufficiency (RQ1b). Defense information insufficiency was positively related to defense heuristic processing (RQ2a), but it was not significantly related to defense systematic processing (RQ2b). It was positively related to defense information seeking (RQ2c) and defense information avoidance (RQ2d).

Informational subjective norms were positively associated with defense information insufficiency (RQ3). Informational subjective norms were positively associated with defense heuristic processing (RQ4a) and defense systematic processing (RQ4b). Informational subjective norms were positively related to defense information seeking (RQ4c), but not significantly related to defense information avoidance (RQ4d). Both defense information seeking (RQ5a) and defense information avoidance (RQ5b) were positively associated with attitude-congruent exposure.

Discussion

By examining the process that drives people to engage in biased, selective risk information seeking, avoidance, and processing, this study set out to understand the phenomenon of polarization surrounding health issues. We employed the RISP model as the guiding framework for this investigation. This research is the first theoretical effort to explicate the notion of defense information insufficiency and to explore its precursors and outcomes. Defense information insufficiency is defined as the perceived gap between the level of risk information a person needs and the level of information the person already has for the goal of confidently defending one’s risk judgments based on one’s self-definitional beliefs.

An important theoretical contribution of this study is to expand the explanatory capacity of the RISP model beyond the situations in which people attempt to form an accurate mental representation of a risk and to make valid risk judgments to deal with the harm caused by the risk, based on available facts and evidence. Public health issues like COVID-19 are multifaceted, and people’s response to the sociopolitical controversies surrounding the issues play into their self-definitional beliefs (i.e., enduring core values, worldview, social identity, personal characteristics, and attitudes supporting their vested material interests). Therefore, in some cases, people can respond to health risks in ways unrelated to making an accurate judgment about the risk. Under such circumstances, the concept of defense information insufficiency is a valuable way to understand how defense motive and its correspondent informational goal could influence people’s choice of mode and manner of risk information use behavior. In addition, to represent people’s defensive informational goal and defense-oriented selectivity, the evidence of this study supports the usefulness of our measure of defense information insufficiency and our proposed measurement items of risk information seeking, avoidance, and processing, in the RISP model.

The conceptualization of defense information insufficiency lays the foundation to examine what factors may give rise to it and how it influences risk information seeking, avoidance, and processing. The findings of this study corroborate that defense information insufficiency is an influential force to drive risk information seeking, avoidance, and processing. The evidence lends empirical support to the RISP model’s (Griffin et al., 2013) propositions that people can seek, avoid, and process risk information for different informational goals. To confidently defend their risk judgment when facing heated controversies surrounding a health hazard, people are likely to perceive the need for risk information to sustain their self-definitional beliefs. Our findings support that, in order to serve their goal of sustaining their self-definitional beliefs, people employ seeking, avoidance, and processing behaviors biasedly and selectively. In this sense, defense information insufficiency not only determines the amount of effort people allocate to seeking and processing information but it also determines the manner in which they seek, avoid, and process risk information.

Our findings indicate that differentiating the different types of information insufficiency is essential to understand the nuanced differences in risk information use behavior that result from the pursuit of different informational goals. According to the RISP model, accuracy information insufficiency, a type of information insufficiency often found in health risk contexts, motivates people to seek, avoid, and process risk information with the goal of protecting themselves from the physical harm caused by a health risk (Griffin et al., 2013). Thus, the model posits that accuracy information insufficiency will be positively related to active information seeking and more effortful, systematic processing, which results in longer lasting and less volatile attitudes and behaviors related to the risk, but negatively related to the more routine heuristic processing, which tends to produce more volatile attitudes and behaviors, and to information avoidance. The rationale is that people seek and process information impartially to achieve the desired level of judgmental confidence for health protection. Conversely, they will avoid additional information when they perceive they already have enough information to confidently make valid judgments (Griffin et al., 2013).

Another important theoretical contribution to the RISP model, stemming from this study, is the exploration of the influence of defense information insufficiency on people’s information use behavior. Our findings reveal a different pattern from that of accuracy information insufficiency, which is depicted in the existing literature. Under the goal of defending self-definitional beliefs, the greater the judgmental confidence gap people perceive in themselves, the more likely they selectively and biasedly search risk information that is congruent with their self-definitional beliefs. An interesting finding is the positive relationship between defense information insufficiency and information avoidance, which suggests that people driven by defense goals are cautious about the information they encounter. To pursue their defense goal, people are likely to purposely avoid attitude-inconsistent risk information. One plausible explanation is that defense-driven people may be more closed-minded to the types of information to which they are exposed. Therefore, they may be more cautious when selecting risk information (Chaiken et al., 1996).

Supporting the HSM literature (Chaiken et al., 1989), our findings indicate that people may pursue biased and selective heuristic processing when they perceive the need for information to confidently reinforce and defend their risk judgments, based on their self-definitional beliefs. Nevertheless, in our study, we did not find that defense information insufficiency related significantly to defense systematic processing. A plausible explanation is that relying on heuristic cues for superficial processing might adequately close the confidence gap for most people in order to defend their risk judgments, based on their self-definitional beliefs; it might not be necessary to extend greater effort to scrutinize risk information carefully (Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1996), or subjectively desirable to do so, unless one is strongly enough motivated to process opposition viewpoints systematically and critically in order to argue effectively against them. This is probably relatively rare.

Similar to the context of protecting from physical harm posed by a health risk (i.e., accuracy informational goal), informational subjective norms were good predictors. Our findings show that informational subjective norms were positively associated with defense goal-oriented information seeking, systematic and heuristic processing. Individuals may encounter arguments and viewpoints that challenge their self-definitions when they feel the societal expectation to remain informed about COVID-19. Such experiences might prompt these people to defend their risk judgments by seeking attitude-congruent risk information and by engaging in biased heuristic and systematic processing of information. It is interesting that there is no significant link between informational subjective norms and defense information avoidance, possibly because significant others’ pressure might focus on what the person should know about COVID-19, and not on what they should avoid.

This study also sheds insight into how biased and selective information seeking, avoidance, and processing could contribute to the polarization surrounding health issues. The findings show that defense information seeking and avoidance are positively associated with exposure to attitude-congruent COVID-19 news. These findings suggest that people with defense goals who engage in selective and biased information seeking and avoidance are more likely to be exposed to attitude-consistent risk information. As such, these people might employ selective seeking and avoidance as a strategic move to build a homogeneous risk information environment (Zhu & Skoric, 2021). Such selective seeking and avoidance reduce their exposure to diverse perspectives on the COVID-19 controversies and their selectivity is conducive to polarization. Selective seeking and avoidance and exposure to attitude-consistent risk information seem to be creating a feedback loop by fueling the long-held divide between people with different deeply rooted self-definitional beliefs. Exposure to attitude-congruent risk information is likely to tighten polarization, making it more difficult to loosen.

Our study reveals a number of sociopsychological factors that may give rise to defense information insufficiency. The findings show that both informational subjective norms and fear of a health hazard increased a sense of defense information insufficiency. A plausible explanation for this relationship between fear and defense information insufficiency is the source of fear toward the risk. Our findings show that risk judgment, personal control, and attributing responsibility to managing agencies are significantly related to fear. Thus, it is likely that the Hong Kong pandemic controversies—such as CoronaVac vaccine, universal community testing, and how the managing agencies handled the controversies—escalated the public’s extraordinary uncertainties about COVID-19. Individuals’ judgment of high riskiness, their perception of less personal control over the risk of COVID-19, and the perception of dissatisfactory performance on the part of the managing agencies are likely to trigger individuals’ fear toward COVID-19. When individuals experience fear that threatens their self-definitional beliefs (e.g., movement restriction, policy mandates, Anti-Asian related rhetoric), such feelings are likely to produce a greater need for risk information in order to sustain their self-definitional beliefs and their position on COVID-19 related controversial issues.

Anger in this study is an affective response toward governmental risk management. Consistent with the literature (Griffin et al., 2008), our findings show that risk judgment, lack of institutional trust, and attribution to managing agencies are associated with greater anger. However, anger does not significantly and directly relate to defense information insufficiency. One possible reason is context-specificity in the measurements. To measure anger, governmental risk management was emphasized in the question items. In contrast, to measure defense information insufficiency, the aspect of defending one’s self-definitional belief was emphasized in the question items. The difference in the semantic contextual emphasis in the two measurements may weaken the predictability of anger on defense information insufficiency. The difference in semantic context in measurement may partially explain the nonsignificant finding in the relationship of anger with defense information insufficiency. Another possible explanation for the lack of a relationship between anger and need for information is the third-variable effect (MacKinnon, 2011). According to Turner (2007), the relationship between anger and a cognitive process, such as systematic processing, depends on two factors: how intense the anger is and the person’s level of self-efficacy, that is, how confident the person is in managing the situation that caused the anger. Thus, the relationship between anger and information insufficiency is apparently complex. More research is needed to untangle the complicated relationship between the two.

A surprising finding is the lack of relationship between institutional trust and fear. One plausible explanation is Hong Kong’s sociopolitical environment. The city underwent the most extreme political turmoil in its history for a full year, leading to an unprecedented peak in governmental mistrust. Therefore, trust in the government may not be related to people’s fear toward COVID-19 risks. The unique sociopolitical environment may also be a plausible explanation for another nonsignificant finding, namely, between personal control and anger at the government in managing the COVID-19 risk. During the pandemic, Hong Kong residents perceived the government’s measures were ineffective. Instead of waiting for government intervention, residents took the initiative to implement several self-protection strategies. A notable instance of this proactive approach was the organized effort by the citizens to distribute and share personal protective gear, such as facemasks and sanitizers (Wan et al., 2020). In this sense, the effectiveness of self-help initiatives, not governmental measures, was more likely to have influenced individuals’ sense of control over the risks of COVID-19. Therefore, personal control may not be related to anger at governmental risk management.

Apart from theoretical contributions, this study also provides practical implications. First, our findings revealed that besides making valid judgments to protect themselves from the physical harm caused by a health risk, people also seek, avoid, and process risk information for defensive reasons. Therefore, public health experts and risk communicators need to recognize the multifaceted nature of people’s informational goals, and to keep in mind the issues surrounding a health hazard that could tie into audience’s self-definitional beliefs. Thus, it is important to design risk messages that can resonate with people’s self-definitional beliefs. For example, to persuade Chinese people, whose national identity is often closely tied to their sense of self, to seek COVID-19 vaccine information and to get vaccinated, risk communicators can emphasize, in promotional messages, that the CoronaVac vaccine is a product of China’s scientific advancement, which would appeal to national pride (Mo et al., 2021; Xiao, 2020).

Second, our findings show that fear and informational subjective norms may give rise to defense information insufficiency, which potentially can lead to biased risk information seeking, avoidance, and processing. Therefore, health communicators should be cautious when designing fear-induced and norm-based messages. Third, although it may be inevitable for defense-oriented people to engage in selective seeking, avoidance, and processing, as well as to be exposed to attitude-consistent risk information, risk communicators could help alleviate the polarization surrounding health hazards. For example, risk communicators can appeal to the common good for the society when designing health persuasive messages. Such appeals may help people to look beyond the ideological differences and to focus on the society’s greater good. Journalists, when faced with reporting claims and counter-claims about a health or other science-based issue, should go beyond the typical and divisive he-said-she-said false balance in stories. Instead, reporters might employ “weight of evidence” reportage, on a truth-continuum, in which they give greater weight to those claims that have the most supportive evidence and expert thought behind them, and less weight to claims lacking such support; finally, tell the audience what they are doing and why they are doing it (Dunwoody, 2005; Kohl et al., 2016).

This study has several limitations, and it offers future research directions. The study’s generalizability is constrained by its nonrandom sample and the unique sociopolitical milieu of Hong Kong. Future research should explore diverse societies and consider including the moderating variables of perceived information gathering capacity and relevant channel beliefs to deepen the understanding of risk information behavior. Furthermore, the self-selection of participants led to an imbalance between the ideological groups represented. However, it is important to note that our study focuses on the associations between variables, rather than on comparing the differences between ideological groups. Therefore, the imbalance of respondents from the two ideological camps should not be problematic.

The measures for fear, anger, and informational subjective norms did not explicitly address the context of defending self-definitional beliefs. Because our study explores defense information insufficiency, our goal is to examine how cognitive and affective reactions toward a health hazard and the social influence regarding that hazard give rise to individuals’ desire for risk information to defend their self-definitional beliefs. Therefore, the measures of fear, anger, and informational subjective norms focused on the health hazard (i.e., COVID-19). However, the measurement of defense information insufficiency emphasized the aspect of defending one’s self-definitional beliefs. The difference in context-specificity in the measurements of the predicted variable (i.e., defense information insufficiency) and of the predictors (i.e., fear, anger, and informational subjective norms) may have weakened the predictor-predicted variable relationship. To further explore the predictability of fear, anger, and informational subjective norms on defense information insufficiency, future research should specify, in their measurements, the aspect of defending self-definitional beliefs.

The study’s measures of institutional trust and systematic processing show acceptable convergent and discriminant validity, although one item in each measure could be improved (see Supplementary Appendix C). Moreover, this study does not investigate accuracy and impression information insufficiency. Future studies should assess all three information insufficiency types to gauge their comparative impacts and the circumstances under which they manifest.

Funding

This study was supported by Hong Kong Baptist University, Research Committee, Initiation Grant—Faculty Niche Research Areas (RC‐FNRA‐IG/19‐20/COMM/02).

References

Biographical Notes

Timothy K. F. Fung (PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison) is an associate professor in the Department of Interactive Media at Hong Kong Baptist University. With a focus on health, environmental, and science issues, his research delves into the intricate ways in which individuals seek, process, and respond to information. His work has been published in Health Communication, Science Communication, Journal of Health Communication, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, and Mass Communication & Society. His research has been honored with Top Faculty Paper Awards and the Article of the Year Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s Division of Communicating Science, Health, Environment, and Risk.

Po Yan Lai (M.A., KAIST) is a research assistant in the Department of Interactive Media at the Hong Kong Baptist University. She is interested in media and communication research, especially in using a data-driven approach to investigate the connections and possibilities which lie between communication technology and society.

Robert J. Griffin (PhD, University of Wisconsin–Madison) is professor emeritus in the Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. He is one of the founders of the Risk Information Seeking and Processing (RISP) model. He focused much of his teaching and research on communication about environment, energy, health, science, and risk. He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society for Risk Analysis. He served on the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Decision, Risk, and Management Sciences program and on the National Research Council’s Committee on Emerging Issues and Data on Environmental Contaminants (part of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences).

Ho Man Leung (MPhil., Lingnan University) is a doctoral student in the School of Communication at Hong Kong Baptist University. He is a sociologist. His research interests include social theory, social movement studies and medical sociology.

Footnotes