Mechanisms of HPV Vaccine Knowledge Levels Under Restricted Supply of Nine-Valent Vaccine in China Mainland

OBJECTIVES: This study expects to examine the level of public knowledge about HPV vaccine and related influencing factors in the context of the limited availability of HPV nine-valent vaccine in China.

METHODS: Using a questionnaire conducted in mainland China (N=491), this study investigates how people's HPV vaccine knowledge is influenced when people engage in health information seeking based on social media.

Cognitive mediation model(CMM) concludes that cognitive expectations influence social behavior and knowledge. The study divides expectations into information seeking expectations and social interaction expectations, and proposes that two expectations directly influence HPV vaccine knowledge level.

CMM proposes that the effect of cognitive expectations on knowledge behavior is mediated by the degree of information attention and the degree of fine-grained information processing (the degree of associative memory with the individual's prior knowledge) of the population. Therefore, the study proposes that they play a mediating effect in the former hypothesis.

At the same time, the study introduces population perceived overload (ability to obtain information quickly and correctly), a blend of perceived internal (personal health knowledge level) and external (exaggerated coverage under nine-valent scarcity), as a moderating variable.

The questionnaire uses Likert scales to enable people to self-report these variables. HPV vaccine knowledge is measured using existing scales.

RESULTS: The effect of information seeking expectation and social interaction expectation on the level of HPV vaccine knowledge is not significant. However, the degree of information attention and fine processing information about HPV vaccine do play a mediating role in this and is moderated by perceived information overload about the nine-valent.

CONCLUSIONS: Under the premise of nine-valent scarcity, HPV vaccine promotion in China needs to recognize the effect of social media in mediating communication through cognitive psychology, while paying attention to the spread of exaggerations of nine-valent effects in social media and reducing perceptual overload.