Affect-inducing cues in risk messages: impact on collective negative emotions during public health emergencies.

Introduction: This study examines how "affect-inducing cues" in risk messages-fear appeals, outrage factors, risk stories, and visual elements-affect collective emotions during public health emergencies. Methods: Using discussions about the COVID-19 variant "Xbb" on the Chinese Q&A platform Zhihu from December 2022 to January 2023, the study applies content analysis and fine-grained emotion analysis to measure these four cues, which serve as predictor variables. Additionally, a sentiment analysis method based on multiple sentiment lexicons and Chinese semantic rule sets is introduced to assess the prevalence of negative emotions among the message audience. Results: The findings reveal that the intensity of fear appeals in risk messages exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with the prevalence of negative emotions. Unexpectedly, risk stories reduce negative emotions, while the outrage factor and visual elements have no significant impact. Discussion: This study addresses the absence of a structural explanatory framework for collective emotional responses during public health emergencies, while practically providing new insights and empirical evidence for optimizing risk communication.