Examining the role of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs in predicting vaccination intentions, preventive behavior and willingness to share opinions about the coronavirus

The primary aim of our study was to examine the role of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs in predicting outcomes that could potentially worsen the course of the pandemic: preventive behavior, vaccination intentions and willingness to share COVID-19 related opinions. Structural equation modeling was performed on a Slovenian sample (N = 490). Analysis showed that COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs predicted all three health-related outcomes when sociodemographic variables were controlled for. Further, a perceived coronavirus threat was identified as an important mediating factor between conspiracy beliefs, preventive behavior and vaccination intentions. Conspiracy beliefs were also positively associated with age, female gender, religiosity, and share of COVID-19 information from social media, while they were negatively associated with level of education. The results suggest that COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs may be an important barrier to achieving pandemic management goals and highlight some risk factors for their occurrence