Abstract As a healthcare ICT4D solution, mobile health (mHealth) can potentially improve users' well‐being during pandemics, especially in developing countries with limited healthcare resources. Recent ICT4D research reveals that providing end‐users with access to ICT is insufficient for improving well‐being and, thus, understanding how mHealth empowers end‐users to enhance well‐being against stressful events is important. However, prior research has rarely discussed the issue of empowerment in the domain of mHealth or the context of major disruptive events. This paper contributes to the literature by conceptualizing the psychological empowerment of mHealth users (PEMU) and investigating its nomological network during pandemics. Drawing upon theories of psychological empowerment and event characteristics, we developed a research model and tested it through a mixed‐methods investigation, containing a quantitative study with 602 Chinese mHealth users during COVID‐19 and a follow‐up qualitative study of 326 online articles and reviews. We found that PEMU, driven by three technological characteristics (perceived response efficacy, ease of use, and mHealth quality), affects well‐being through both (a) a stress‐buffering effect, which counterbalances the detrimental, stress‐increasing effects of event criticality and disruption, and (b) a vitality‐stimulating effect, which is intensified by event criticality. These findings have important implications for ICT4D research and practice.

Digital/virtual gift purchasing and giving (gifting thereafter) is a business model that has emerged in the context of the social live streaming service (SLSS). In this study, we argue that both SLSS and its gifting model are largely established upon the application of game and game-like design elements and principles in the non-game environment – a process known as gamification. The system and content qualities of SLSS gamification exercise activating effects on users’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for gifting behavior – a transactional process that can serve as a novel model for the electronic commerce (E-Commerce) industry to leverage customers’ transactional behaviors. Built upon the gamification literature, this study develops a research model to investigate SLSS gamification and its motivating effects on users’ gifting behaviors. The model is validated using a cross-sectional field survey of 697 SLSS users. The theoretical and practical implications as well as limitations and future research are discussed in the Chinese E-Commerce context.

Social media services become a hotbed for rumors and lies during health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. While previous literature studies the negative role that social media users play in spreading rumors during crises, this study explores how users can be motivated to combat COVID-19 rumors. We build a research model that is based on the Awareness-Motivation-Capability framework and empirically test our model using data collected from 279 Chinese social media users. Our results show that rumor combating behavior, defined as users’ actions to discourage others from sharing information from unverified sources, is influenced directly by the personal norm, altruism, social ties, and knowledge, and indirectly by perceived severity and perceived vulnerability through the personal norm. Our study highlights the importance of prosocial behavior such as rumor combating on social media during health crises.