Promoting HPV vaccination: effectiveness of mobile short videos for shaping attitudes and influencing behaviors

Abstract

The explosive growth and attractive features of mobile short videos (MSVs) have made it become an effective tool for disseminating health-related information. This study aims to examine the potential informational and technical factors of MSVs, which contribute to the persuasive effects on people’s decision-making process toward HPV vaccination. An experiment with a 2 (information quality: high vs. low) × 2 (source credibility: high vs. low) × 2 (media richness: high vs. low) between-subject factorial design was conducted among 248 Chinese female students. Findings revealed significant persuasive impacts of three factors, i.e., information quality, source credibility, and media richness, on participants’ HPV vaccination intent, via the mediation effect of attitude toward HPV vaccine information. Significant two-way interaction effects indicated that the persuasive effects of media richness varied across different levels of information quality and source credibility. This research not only applied the theoretical lens of the elaboration likelihood model and media richness theory to understand the influencing mechanism within short-form videos but also offered valuable guidelines regarding how professionals best adopt emerging media to maximize health outcomes.