Information Seeking and COVID-19 Preventive Behaviors: A Comparison Between Immigrants and the Host Population in Japan

Little is known about information seeking and its in-fluence on preventive behaviors among immigrants in Japan, despite their vulnerabilities during the corona -virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This study investigated information seeking about COVID-19, and examined differences with compliance with pre-ventive measures between immigrants and the host population in Japan based on an Internet survey con-ducted in October 2021. We used chi-squared tests to determine the difference in information seeking and preventive behaviors between the two groups, and Poisson regression with robust standard errors to ex-amine the association between information seeking and compliance with preventive measures. Our re-sults show that, although the overall tendencies of in-formation seeking and the preventive behaviors of im-migrants were similar to those of the Japanese, signifi-cant differences were identified in some behavior: im-migrants were more likely to acquire COVID-19 infor-mation from social networking services (SNS) and offi-cial websites in Japan, and maintain physical distance and ventilation than Japanese locals. Furthermore, immigrants' sources of information diversified accord-ing to their sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., ed-ucational level, Japanese language skills, length of res-idence in Japan, and country or region of origin). Ad-ditionally, the effects of information seeking on pre-ventive actions against COVID-19 differed according to the information sources; some information sources (e.g., SNS) had different impacts on preventive behav-iors between immigrants and Japanese locals. Obtain-ing information from traditional media and Japanese official websites increases engagement with all five pre-ventive measures among immigrants and four mea-sures among the Japanese. The study highlights the importance of customized health policies for immi-grants according to their behavioral tendencies.