Misleading health risk information and public health decision-making on digital platforms: evidence from tech-fearmongering food production short videos

Background: Digital platforms have become important channels for public health risk information and everyday health decision-making. Misleading risk information may distort public risk cognition, weaken trust in regulatory systems, and reshape protective behavioral intentions. Methods: Grounded in Protection Motivation Theory, this study examined tech-fearmongering food production short videos as a case of misleading health risk information in platform environments. A scenario-based experimental design was used with 487 valid responses from Chinese internet users. Single-mediator and parallel multiple mediator models were estimated using PROCESS Model 4 with 5,000 bootstrap resamples to test the mediating roles of health threat appraisal, negative emotions, and trust erosion. Results: Cognitive, affective, and social trust pathways all contributed to the mechanism linking misleading risk information to public health decision-making. In the parallel mediation model, health threat appraisal and trust erosion showed unique significant indirect effects on public risk cognition, while health threat appraisal was the dominant unique mediator for protective behavioral intention. Conclusion: Tech-fearmongering food production short videos can influence public health decision-making through health threat appraisal, negative emotions, and trust erosion. Digital health risk information governance should address emotional reactions and trust erosion in addition to cognitive threat appraisal, with implications for platform governance, health risk communication, and public health information quality control.