Nudging Away Health Misinformation on Social Media: The Roles of Social Influences and Power Distance

Nudges are considered as potential and promising approaches to combat misinformation on social media, yet they often overlooked the influence of other users. This study aims to explore the impact of social influence on people’s attitudes toward health misinformation by utilizing nudges on social media. We conducted a 2 * 3 between-subject web-based experiment to test the effectiveness of informational and normative social influences and obtained data from 247 participants. The preliminary results show that both social influences reduce sharing likelihood of misinformation, by decreasing perceived credibility. Informational social influence increases individuals’ perceived threat while normative social influence decreases it. Power distance significantly moderates the relationship between normative social influence and perceived threat. This study contributes to nudging away misinformation by revealing the roles of two distinctive social influences, and also furnishes practical implications for the misinformation governance on social media.