Avoidance as an exit door for international students in dealing with information overload during the pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed education systems and impacted students' mental health negatively. This condition may affect international students in a certain country. International students' problems are made more complicated by differences in culture, language, and the way local governments handle pandemics, especially upon socializing COVID-19 information. This study aims to examine international students’ behavior in Indonesia in regard with COVID-19 information consumption massively spread in both local and international media. It applied PLS-SEM to evaluate measurement and structural models. The results demonstrated that Information seeking and exposure cause the information overload. Information overload leads to anxiety, and anxiety brings about avoidance from COVID-19 information. Furthermore, Information overload does not have a significant direct effect on information avoidance. However, information overload affects information avoidance mediated by information anxiety. Therefore, it is advisable for government media to provide complete and accurate information related to COVID-19, especially that for international students. Keywords: Information anxiety; information avoidance; information exposure; information seeking; information overload.