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Abstract: In the context of the most severe pandemic in over 100 years, this study examined public health behavior and public health messaging using the health belief model (HBM) and organization-public relationships (OPR) as frameworks. The study employed a cross-sectional survey of students (n = 288) and employees (n = 203) at a large public university in the southeastern United States. First, the study empirically tested the components of the HBM as determinants of engaging in health behaviors meant to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and, supporting prior HBM research, found all components of the model to be significantly related to engaging in the health behaviors. Next, the study found the relationship between the university's public health messaging and OPR quality to be statistically significant. Additionally, findings indicated that OPR quality was significantly related to engaging in the health behaviors. This study contributes to both theory and practice with significant findings that provide a direction for further translational research utilizing the HBM and OPR to examine public health communication. Keywords: coronavirus, cues to action, health behavior change, public health communication, relationship theory
Points for Practitioners:
The study found that perceived threat and perceived benefits were the strongest determinants of engaging in COVID-19 health behaviors.
This study is believed to be the first to examine the association of public health messaging to the relationship quality between the organization sending the messaging and the publics receiving the messaging, finding public health messaging significantly related to organization-public relationship (OPR) quality and OPR quality significantly related to engagement in the health behaviors.
When looking at the organization-public relationship between the organization sending the public health message and its publics, trust in the organization had the strongest relationship with engagement in the health behaviors. Based on this study's findings, to be most effective at influencing health behavior related to the COVID-19 pandemic, public health messaging should focus on the threat posed by the virus and the efficacy of the suggested health behaviors in reducing that threat, and the messaging should be communicated in a way that builds trust between the organization sending the messaging and its publics. While these findings are specific to the university and population examined in this study and thus have limited generalizability, they should serve...