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Cited by 357

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 18 of the 18 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, health behaviors, and policy support

Open access
Earnshaw, Valerie A, Eaton, Lisa A, Kalichman, Seth C, Brousseau, Natalie M, Hill, E Carly, Fox, Annie B·2020·Translational Behavioral Medicine

Abstract

Conspiracy theories have been proliferating during the COVID-19 pandemic. Evidence suggests that belief in conspiracy theories undermines engagement in pro-health behaviors and support for public health policies. Moreover, previous work suggests that inoculating messages from opinion leaders that expose conspiracy theories as false before people are exposed to them can help to prevent belief in new conspiracies. Goals of this study were to: (a) explore associations between COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs with SARS-CoV-2 vaccine intentions, cooperation with public health recommendations, and support for public health policies among U.S. adults and (b) investigate trusted sources of COVID-19 information to inform strategies to address conspiracy beliefs. A cross-sectional, online survey was conducted with 845 U.S. adults in April 2020. Data were analyzed using analyses of variance and multivariable regressions. One-third (33%) of participants believed one or more conspiracies about COVID-19. Participants who believed conspiracies reported that their intentions to vaccinate were 3.9 times lower and indicated less support for COVID-19 public health policies than participants who disbelieved conspiracies. There were no differences in cooperation with public health recommendations by conspiracy belief endorsement in the multivariable regression analysis. Although there were some key differences in trusted sources of COVID-19 information, doctor(s) were the most trusted source of information about COVID-19 overall with 90% of participants trusting doctor(s). Doctor(s) may play a role in addressing COVID-19 conspiracy theories before people are exposed to them to promote COVID-19 prevention efforts.

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Metadata

Authors
Earnshaw, V. A., Eaton, L. A., Kalichman, S. C., Brousseau, N. M., Hill, E. C., & Fox, A. B.
Venue
Translational Behavioral Medicine
Published
2020-08
Volume
10
Issue
4
Pages
850-856
ISSN
  • 1613-9860 (ISSN-L)
  • 1869-6716
OpenAlex
W3086309603
Cited by
357
References
18
FWCI
90.23
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
bronze

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, health behaviors, and policy support. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1093/tbm/ibaa090
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Earnshaw, V. A., Eaton, L. A., Kalichman, S. C., Brousseau, N. M., Hill, E. C., & Fox, A. B. (2020). COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, health behaviors, and policy support. Translational Behavioral Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1093/tbm/ibaa090

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.