Exploring Cues to Action in Health Belief Model

The Health Belief Model (HBM) has played a key role in describing, explaining, andpredicting health-related outcomes. As one of the major health behavior theories,HBM has been well applied in numerous health-related studies. However, thesestudies often ignore the original conception of HBM as a theoretical model becausethey focus mainly on the predictive roles of risk perception variables – i.e., perceivedsusceptibility, severity, benefit, and barrier. Within that process, cues to action has notbeen comprehensively studied. The current study addresses these limitations in HBMresearch in two ways: (1) following the original conception of HBM and therecommendation by previous researchers, we did not use risk perception constructs asseparate predictors but rather used perceived threat (perceived severity×perceivedsusceptibility) and perceived evaluation of action (perceived benefit-barrier); (2) weexplored both internal and external cues in predicting health-related outcome andseparated out interpersonal and media cues from external cues. Path analysis of 992representative Korean adult samples in the context of tuberculosis (TB) revealed threemajor findings: (1) Interpersonal and (2) media cues are related to TB screeningintention directly and indirectly through perceived threat; (3) perceived threat, but notperceived evaluation of action, is significantly related to TB screening intention.Theoretical and practical implications for our findings are discussed.