1. Coping with Zika: How Health Crisis Appraisal Predicts Intended Preventive Behavior
Yan Jin, Associate Professor, University of Georgia
Yen-I Lee, Doctoral Student, University of Georgia
Jeanine Guidry, Ph.D. Candidate, Virginia Commonwealth University
Marcus Messner, Associate Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University
Shana Meganck, Assistant Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University
Jay Adams, Assistant Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University
*This project is funded by UGA Department of Advertising and Public Relations

2. Background
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a travel advisory warning pregnant women about avoiding travel to Zika transmission regions.
CDC also has asked health care professionals to report flu-like symptoms in patients who have traveled to and from affected countries.
Conversations filled with panic about the Zika virus have quickly surfaced on social media platforms.
Feelings of anxiety and fear also tend to go viral, and the presence of social media, visual postings in particular, seems to escalate the speed at which the perceived “public health crisis” spreads.

3. Purpose of the Study
To focus on how the publics appraise the threat of the Zika virus, as communicated by a government agency.
To examine how publics perceive the severity of the health crisis.
To look at how publics feel anxious about the situation.
To discover whether publics plan to seek further information on social media and non-social media channels.
The study also further examine how perceived severity, anxiety, and information seeking behavior predict the tendency of taking government health agency recommended prevention behavior as a strategic health communication outcome measure.

4. Literature Review: Integrated Crisis Mapping (ICM) Model
To better understand publics’ “minds and hearts” during crisis (Jin, Pang, & Cameron, 2007, p.266)
Maps crises on two continua:
Organization’ engagement in crises
Primary publics’ coping strategies
Asserts anger, fright, sadness, and anxiety are primary crisis emotions
Anxiety is the default in crisis

5. Literature Review:
Jin, Liu and Fraustino (2016) examined publics’ emotional coping in a hypothetical terrorist attack, focuseing on the conative coping aspect recommended by ICM, driven by publics’ action tendency (i.e., the feeling that publics can, and must, do something about the situation).
This study further examines Jin et al.’s (2016) approach in a real public health crisis situation – Zika outbreak.
Zika Information Seeking
Zika Information Sharing
Protective Action:
Following CDC Instruction
Core behavioral outcomes posited by the
social-mediated crisis communication model (SMCC)

6. Research Questions RQ1 set EMOTIONS RQ2 set Severity
RQ1.1: How, if at all, does anxiety predict publics’ Zika information seeking behaviors?
RQ1.2: How, if at all, does anxiety predict publics’ Zika information sharing behaviors?
RQ1.3: How, if at all, does anxiety predict publics’ behavior of taking protective actions instructed by CDC?
RQ2 set
Severity
RQ2.1: How do publics’ perceived severity of Zika predict their Zika information seeking behavior?
RQ2.2: How do publics’ publics’ perceived severity of Zika predict their Zika information sharing behavior?
RQ2.3: How do publics’ publics’ perceived severity of Zika predict their behavior of taking protective actions recommended by CDC?

7. Method
185 U.S. adults were recruited to read a zika message sent by CDC, and were asked to fill with the online survey questions in April 2016.
Gender: There were 91 females (49.2%) and 94 males (50.8%).
Age group n
Percentage
18-24 23
12.4%
25-34 29
15.7%
35-44 32
17.3%
45-54 40
21.6%
55-64 25
13.5%
65-74
75+ 7
3.8%

8. Ethnicity n
Percentage
White, Non-Hispanic
141
76.2%
Black, Non-Hispanic 13
7.0%
Other, Non-Hispanic 5
2.7%
Hispanic 21
11.4%
2+ races, Non-Hispanic
Marital Status n
Percentage
Married 96
51.9%
Widowed 10
5.4%
Divorced 16
8.6%
Separated 2
1.1%
Never married 46
24.9%
Living with partner 15
8.1%
Region n
Percentage
Northeast 33
17.8%
Midwest 30
16.2%
South 69
37.3%
West 53
28.6%

9. Results: Hierarchical Regression
Model
Predictors
Adj. R2 F β t p 1
Severity
.139
30.828***
.380
5.552
.000 2
.205
24.748***
.291
4.189
Anxious
.279
4.015 3
.313
21.959***
.228
3.479
.001
.210
3.115
.002
Social Media Information Seeking
-.271
-3.572
Non-Social Media Information Seeking
.439
5.499

10. Discussion
Our hierarchical regression analyses reveal significant influences of health risk appraisal, felt emotion, and coping via information seeking activities on participants’ likelihood of taking health authority recommended actions to protect themselves against the Zika virus.
One of the surprising but interesting findings is that people less follow the CDC instruction while they use more social media as a tool for information seeking. This indicates that health professionals and practitioners should consider the issue of information overwhelming for recipients when the health crisis comes out.

11. Implications Practical Theoretical
Segmenting publics by emotions and perceived crisis severity
No single channel most effective for public health crisis
Social media might contribute negatively in public health crisis preparedness
Theoretical
ICM model verification & expansion in health crisis context
Examine conative coping actions presented by SMCC research in health crisis
Anxiety drives different behavioral outcomes
Crisis perception (e.g., perceived severity) is important

12. Thank you! 