Exploring factors influencing Chinese user’s perceived credibility of health and safety information on Weibo

•We examine factors affecting Weibo information credibility.•Low-level claim extremity increases Weibo information credibility.•Negative comments decrease Weibo information credibility.•Positive comments have no significant effect on credibility.•The effect of message popularity depends on prior trust on the information.

The spread of non-credible health and safety information on microblog sites may lead to serious consequences when people use such sites as the basis for critical decisions. This study investigated the factors influencing Chinese microblog users’ perception of the credibility of health and safety information. Credibility cues related to the source (source credentials), the message (claim extremity and claim type), and the distribution in personal networks (type of comments, source of comments, and the number of reposts of a message) were examined. Three experiments were conducted on a mocked up Weibo system with 80 participants. The results show that objective claims with low extremity increased perceived information credibility when the participants were highly involved with the issue and had enough prior knowledge. When the participants had insufficient prior knowledge, the source credentials positively influenced the information’s credibility. Negative comments from personal networks decreased perceived credibility significantly, and this effect was slightly more pronounced when the comments came from close friends. For credible information, a large number of reposts added to the credibility, whereas for less credible information, a large number of reposts may induce greater skepticism and decrease perceived credibility.