Health Information Seeking Behaviour, Risk Communication, and Mobility During COVID-19

Abstract

The existence of physical and financial barriers in the provision of healthcare leads to an increasing recognition that alternative sources of information are being used to supplement or replace the advice of healthcare professionals. Internet search engines are a common means to obtain health information. However, information, misinformation, and disinformation are all available concurrently, leaving health information seekers to distinguish these categories of information. Following a review of theories directly and indirectly related to health information-seeking behaviour (HISB), we examine how public announcements made by credible sources (e.g., health professionals and politicians) in varying geographic regions (globally, nationally (Canada), and regionally (New York State) influenced both HISB (represented by Google Searches) and whether this influences human behaviour (represented by Google Mobility Data). Across these analyses, we demonstrate that there are strong correlations between information search behaviour and mobility around the time of public health announcements suggesting that, directly or indirectly, health communication was associated with changes in individual behaviour.