Current Psychology

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04343-4

The intrinsic and extrinsic factors predicting fake news sharing among
social media users: the moderating role of fake news awareness
Bahiyah Omar1  · Oberiri Destiny Apuke2 · Zarina Md Nor3

Accepted: 27 January 2023

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2023

Abstract
Research on fake news is growing, yet the relative influence of different factors on fake news sharing and how it can be
reduced are still understudied. To fill this gap, this study treats user motivation and online environment as intrinsic and
extrinsic factors and examines the role of fake news awareness as a prevention against the spread of fake news. This study
describes the results of a Malaysian sample (N = 451) to determine the effects of intrinsic factor (altruism, information
sharing, socialization and status seeking) and extrinsic factor (trust in network, homophily, norm of reciprocity and tie
strength) on fake news sharing using Partial Least Square (PLS). Unlike past research, we treated the two main factors as
higher order-constructs. Our findings revealed a stronger appeal of online environment than user motivation in determining
fake news sharing among social media users in Malaysia. We also found that high fake news awareness determined low
fake news sharing. This result suggests the importance of fake news awareness as an intervention strategy to curtail the
spread of fake news. Future research is needed to build upon our findings to be tested at cross-cultural settings and also
employ time series analysis to better understand the effect of increasing awareness of fake news over time.

Keywords  Fake news · User motivation · Online environment · Fake news awareness · Social media users · Malaysia

Introduction verification and fake news detection tools (Tandoc et al.,

The ubiquity of social media has facilitated the spread of
fake news (Jost et al., 2020) and the increasing reliance on
mobile devices for news seeking and information sharing
has accelerated it further. Fake news, in the form of misin-
formation and disinformation, has received much attention
and scrutiny among scholars and policy makers in recent
years. This is because the spread of fake news is considered
as an information disorder (Castioni et al., 2022; Wang et
al., 2019) that has social, political, and economic implica-
tions. Likewise, policy makers have been looking for the
solutions using various strategies such as developing news
Bahiyah Omar
bahiyah@usm.my
1
School of Communication, Universiti Sains Malaysia,
Penang 11800 USM, Malaysia
2
Department of Mass Communication, Taraba State
University, PMB 1167, Jalingo, Nigeria
3
School of Distance Education, Universiti Sains Malaysia,
Penang 11800 USM, Malaysia
2018), enforcing strict laws and regulations (Roozenbeek
& van der Linden, 2019) and promoting digital literacy or
fake news awareness in society to counter fake news spread
(Torres et al., 2018).
The rise of fake news in modern times have attracted
streams of research. These studies could be categorised into
three segments to include studies that focused on fake news
detection using computer science approach, impact of fake
news on politics, science and society and lastly predictors of
fake news sharing behaviour (Laato et al., 2020). Most stud-
ies that examined fake news predictors relied on Uses and
Gratification theory (UGT) to demonstrate how different
types of motives predict fake news sharing on social media
(Sampat & Raj, 2022; Laato et al., 2020). There are a few
studies that adopt multiple perspectives, such as a combi-
nation of UGT, social network site dependency theory and
social impact theory (Apuke & Omar, 2020), cognitive load
and affordance theory (Islam et al., 2020; Apuke & Omar,
2021b) to understand the phenomenon but these studies
treated the dimension of a factor individually and hence,
unable to show the relative influence of different factors on
fake news sharing. This study aims to examine the effect

13

of user motivation as intrinsic factor and online environ-
mental as extrinsic factor on fake news sharing. Unlike past
research, intrinsic and extrinsic factors are treated as higher
order constructs. Furthermore, the results of this study may
contribute to efforts aimed at reducing the harm of fake
news (Altay et al., 2022; Talwar et al., 2020; Laato et al.,
2020). To the best of our knowledge, the role of fake news
awareness in mitigating the effect of fake news spread is
less well studied. This study intends to address this by treat-
ing fake news awareness as the moderating variable which
we expect to function as a preventive measure to curtail the
spread of fake news.
Fake news studies
In understanding fake news sharing, many past studies
have focused on user-related factors. They found various
individual factors that lead to fake news sharing on social
media, such as confirmation bias (Kim & Dennis, 2019),
self-promotion, entertainment, exploration and religiosity
(Islam et al., 2020), altruism, information sharing, informa-
tion seeking and passing time (Apuke & Omar, 2021a) and
deficiency of knowledge, laziness in authenticating infor-
mation source(s) and lack of critical thinking (Tsang, 2022).
On the other hand, a growing body of studies examined
other factors apart from the users. Chen et al. (2015) found
that content relevance and believability rather than source,
contributed to people forwarding misinformation. Other
studies found that information abundance on social media
contributes to fake news spread (Tandoc & Kim, 2022).
Information abundance is often associated with informa-
tion overload which was found to be a significant predictor
to COVID-19 unverified news sharing (Laato et al., 2020).
The results suggest different effects of user-related factors
across different contexts. This is partly because past studies
tested the factors as single predictors rather than as a unified
predictors to show the influence of user factor in relation to
other factors.
The current study aims to fill the gap by developing a
research model that test the factors as higher order constructs
of intrinsic motivation (user related factors) and extrinsic
motivation (online environmental factors) to provide a more
comprehensive understanding of fake news spread on social
media. For emphasis, the intrinsic factor comprises of altru-
ism, information sharing, socialization and status seeking.
We viewed altruism as users’ act of sharing information on
social media to help others without any thought of recipro-
cal benefit. Information sharing deals with users’ motive to
inform others on social media. Socialization is the act of
sharing information to socialize with other users in the net-
work for unity and sociality. Status seeking deals with shar-
ing of information to uphold users’ status on social media
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Current Psychology
to seek attention. Meanwhile, the extrinsic factor consists
of trust in network, homophily, norm of reciprocity and tie
strength. We define trust in network as the trust a person has
on his/her network members. Homophily is the similarities
in network members that prompt them to freely share news.
Norm of reciprocity is the belief that people will share back
news, if we share it to them and tie strength is the level
of relationship strength that occurs online. The intrinsic
and extrinsic factors are derived from the uses and grati-
fication theory (U&G) and Social Capital Theory (SCT)
respectively.
Despite the growth of research examining fake news and
misinformation, little attention has been paid to develop-
ing countries, especially the Asian contexts (Balakrishnan
et al., 2021). This warrants for further exploration in this
area. Research that appears in the literature mostly focus
on the link between fake news and politics such as fake
news governance in Asia-Pacific (Neo, 2022), misinforma-
tion regulation in Asia-Pacific (Carson & Fallon, 2021), and
fake news public opinion in Japan, South Korea and Thai-
land (Cheng et al., 2021). We found very few studies that
examined why people share fake news in Asian contexts.
For example, Tandoc et al. (2021) found political bias and
cognitive ability were the significant predictors to fake news
sharing in Singapore and Talwar et al. (2019) found online
trust, self-disclosure and fear of missing out were the pre-
dictors to fake news sharing behaviour in India. Some stud-
ies examined the spread of fake news related to COVID-19
and found altruism, ignorance and entertainment as sig-
nificant predictors to fake news sharing in Malaysia dur-
ing COVID-19 pandemic (Balakrishnan et al., 2021) while
predictors of self-promotion, exploration, entertainment and
religiosity were found significant in Bangladesh (Islam et
al., 2020). It is important to note that “most of the world’s
social media users reside in Asia” (Insider Intelligence,
2022), and hence more research using Asian lens is needed.
In doing so, we focused on a developing country which is
Malaysia. As internet penetration in Malaysia reached 88%
in 2020 and is projected to grow to 89.6% in 2025 (Satista
Research Department, 2022), it is essential to understand
what drives fake news sharing in one of the countries that
has high internet penetration rate in Asia. The findings of
this study, therefore, might speak to a more general pattern
of the phenomenon at the global network.
Theoretical background and hypothesis
development
We combined Uses and Gratification Theory (UGT) and
Social Capital Theory (SCT) to explain intrinsic (i.e.: user
motivation) and extrinsic (i.e.: online environment) factors
for fake news sharing on social media. We argue that UGT
Current Psychology
does not capture the external factors that affect sharing, thus,
this study includes assumptions of SCT to better understand
the phenomenon beyond the user factor. Furthermore, this
study introduced fake news awareness as a moderator to
mitigate the effects of the identifed predictors on online fake
news sharing behaviour in Malaysia.
The intrinsic user motivation: uses and gratification
theory (UGT) perspective
It has been proven that the UGT has been often used to exam-
ine social media gratifications, suggesting technologies are
employed by individuals to satisfy their social and psycho-
logical wishes (Katz et al., 1974). In summary, the theory
reasons what individuals do with the media rather than what
the media does to individuals (Katz et al., 1973). In recent
years the UGT has been widely adopted to realise the fun-
damental motivations behind engaging with several techno-
logical platforms in different context and domain (Sampat &
Raj, 2022; Osei-Frimpong et al., 2022). It has also been used
to examine fake news, news sharing and knowledge sharing
behaviour (Apuke & Omar, 2021a; Thompson et al., 2019).
Drawing from the UGT and past studies, the user factor in
this study comprised of status seeking, altruism, socializa-
tion, and information sharing. Thus, we hypothesised that:
H1. User factor will be positively related to fake news
sharing behaviour.
The extrinsic online environmental factor: social
capital theory perspective
According to social capital theory propounded by Cole-
man (1988), people get rewarded from connecting with
others and such rewards has been extended to sharing on
social media (Zhang & Jung, 2022). In summary, the theory
asserts that knowledge and resources are exchanged lead-
ing to the creation of value via social relationship (Tóth
et al., 2022). Therefore, social capital is entrenched in the
association between people and their linkage with their
societies (Wang et al., 2022). The social capital has three
dimensions that include relational, cognitive, and structural
aspects (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). The structural dimen-
sion pays attention to the general pattern of relationship that
occurs between people (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). For
example, people with specific network ties could get access
to information in time compared to others. The relational
dimension entails trust, norms of reciprocity, identification
and obligation (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998).. The cognitive
dimension comprises shared language, code and narratives
(Chang & Chuang, 2011). However, recent study has added
homophily to this aspect (Apuke & Omar, 2021c).
The social capital dimensions used in this current study
comprised of tie strength, trust, reciprocity, and homophily.
Past studies have used the social capital dimensions to test
information and knowledge sharing (Dias & Silva 2022),
information seeking (Zhao et al., 2018) and news sharing
(Al-Emran et al., 2020). We believe that since it has been
successfully used to test news sharing behaviour, it could as
well be applicable to fake news sharing. Thus, we hypoth-
esised that:
H2. Online environment factor will be positively related
to fake news sharing behaviour.
Fake news awareness as the moderating factor
Evidence suggests that much of the dissemination of fake
news is due to human behaviour, since people who come
across erroneous material on social media may negligently
propagate it (Rodrigo et al., 2022). Therefore, it has been
found that users are important players that could help in cur-
tailing fake news, if their knowledge and ability to realise
the presence of fake news is intensified (Aoun Barakat et al.,
2021). It has also been revealed that social media users who
lack critical thinking are vulnerable to fake news (Penny-
cook & Rand, 2019). These studies generally agree that the
ability to differentiate real news from false news is related
to critical reasoning that makes people aware of fake news
and its grave implications in society.
In this study, we propose that adequate fake news aware-
ness could help in curtailing or dissuading people from shar-
ing fake news. In this study, we define fake news awareness
as the practical understanding of what fake news is and the
skills to detect it due to increasing amount of media literacy.
Past research also found that adequate skills and knowledge
on fake news is essential to identify fake news when they
come across it (Tandoc et al., 2018). Prior studies have also
argued that media literacy intervention can empower social
media users to combat fake news and critical thinking is
crucial for them to debunk false information (Maksl et al.,
2017). It was found that deductive reasoning will help people
to differentiate between factual and deceptive content (Lee,
2018) and those with higher levels of fake news awareness
and knowledge have higher tendency to verify information
before sharing as well as before consuming and believing
(Pundir et al., 2021). Nevertheless, there are opposite views
regarding the effectiveness of fake news awareness as an
intervention for fake news spread. For example, Papapicco
et al. (2022) found that individuals share false informa-
tion on social media even though they are aware of the act
of sharing fake news. Information overload has also been
pointed as a factor that makes people vulnerable unable to
distinguish between truthful and actual news, suggesting
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Fig. 1  A higher-order structural model of fake news sharing
the role of fake news awareness might not be that effective
(Zhang et al., 2022).
There are mixed findings on the effects of fake news
awareness. Drawing from these streams of arguments, we
position fake news awareness as moderating factor rather
than direct predictor to determine whether user factor and
online environment have stronger effect on fake news shar-
ing for those with low fake news awareness. In short, we
intend to test and substantiate if awareness regarding fake
news will curtail the intrinsic and extrinsic influence that
prompt fake news sharing. Thus, we hypothesised that:
H3. Fake news awareness will moderate the relationship
between user factor and fake news sharing in such a way
that the relationship will be stronger for those with low fake
news awareness.
H4. Fake news awareness will moderate the relationship
between online environment factor fake news sharing in
such a way that the relationship will be stronger for those
with low fake news awareness.
Figure 1 demonstrates the structural model linking user
factor and online environmental factor as higher order
13
Current Psychology
constructs that affect fake news sharing while fake news
awareness is positioned as the moderator that mitigate the
effects.
Methods
Research design and samples
This study used a participatory method of crowdsourcing
survey response to collect information and opinion from a
large group of people (Keating et al., 2013) who are nor-
mally sourced via the Internet. This method has several
advantages. Crowdsourced data collection is a more effi-
cient and less expensive than traditional data collection
method that allows researchers to gather diverse data in
real time (Keating et al., 2013). Using this method, we col-
lected 600 responses over a period of two months. We set
two inclusion criteria; respondents’ age must be above 18
years old, and they must be active social media users. Of
the 600 responses, only 451 were considered valid while
Current Psychology

Table 1  Profile of respondents Measures

Characteristics Frequency Percentage (%)
Gender
All measures were adapted from prior studies except for
Male 290 64.3
fake news awareness which was newly developed in this
Female 161 35.7
study. We adapted the constructs of intrinsic and extrinsic
Age
18–25 226 50.1 factors based on theoretical backings and evidence from
16–35 150 33.3 past studies. Also, they have been statistically validated to
36–45 32 7.1 belong to the clusters of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations
46–55 24 5.3 as shown in this study. The constructs were measured using
56 and above 19 4.2 a 5-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to
Education strongly agree (5). It should be noted that all constructs have
SPM and below 96 21.3 been defined in the introduction of this research. We adapted
Diploma 133 29.5 altruism from the study of Apuke and Omar (2021a), while
Bachelor’s degree 153 33.9 status seeking, information sharing, and socialization were
Postgraduate 43 9.5
adapted from Thompson et al. (2019). These studies sug-
Others 26 5.8
gest that the identified constructs have been shown to be
Frequently used SNS
salient in explaining user factor. Trust in network was
WhatsApp 237 52.5
Facebook 96 21.3
adapted from Apuke and Omar (2021c), norm of reciprocity
Twitter 30 6.7 was adapted from Liu et al. (2016), while tie strength and
Instagram 67 14.9 homophily were adapted from the study of Ma et al. (2014).
Others 21 4.7 These studies assert that trust in network, norm of reciproc-
Time ity, tie strength and homophily are reflective of online envi-
1–3 h 179 39.7 ronment factor that prompt sharing behaviour. Fake news
4–6 h 181 40.1 sharing items were adapted from the studies of Laato et al.
7–9 h 44 9.8 (2020) and Chadwick and Vaccari (2019). As for fake news
10 h and above 47 10.4 awareness measure, we deduced indicators of knowledge
Race and skills for detecting fake news from past research (Tor-
Malay 272 60.3
res et al., 2018). The indicators were later validated by an
Chinese 147 32.6
experts’ panel, then pre-tested on some social media users.
Indian 32 7.1
We adhered to the procedure of Moore and Benbasat (1991)
 N = 451
in developing the items for fake news awareness measure
which was further supported by statistical analyses of con-
150 cases were found to have straight lining issue. Straight vergent validity and discriminant validity carried out in this
lining pattern occurs when the respondents give the identi- study (see results section).
cal or almost identical feedbacks for most questions (Hair
Jr, et al., 2017). In this study, we used Microsoft Excel to Common method bias
examine the straight lining problem and all 150 cases were
excluded for further analysis. Since we obtained our entire responses from the same
As crowdsourced data collection method is associated source it is necessary to test for common method bias. To
with sampling bias, we used statistics of Malaysian popula- identify any potential bias, the Harman’s single factor test
tion distribution to guide our selection of sample. Table 1 was used, and a factor only accounted for 23.3% of the
shows the characteristics of the study respondents. Accord- largest variance explained, suggesting no issue of common
ing to the Department of Statistics Malaysia. (2021), the method bias since it is less than 50% (Ramayah et al., 2018).
breakdown comprises 52% males and 48% females with Following the recommendations of Kock and Lynn (2012),
69.7% between the ages of 15 and 64. Malaysia is a multi- common method bias was further tested with the full col-
racial country with three major races of Malay (69.8%), linearity test when a dummy variable was regressed against
Chinese (22.4%) and Indian (6.8%) respectively. Our study all the variables in the model and the results showed that all
sample comprised of 64.3% males and 35.7% females, with values were below the threshold of 3.3, suggesting that our
95% between the ages of 18 and 55 years old. Furthermore, study does not suffer from the issue of common method bias
race distribution in this study was almost identical with the (see Table 2).
distribution of Malaysian population with Malay 60.3%,
Chinese 32.6% and Indian 7.1%.

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Table 2  Full collinearity assessment
Variable Random Dummy variable
Altruism 1.753
Homophily 1.957
Information sharing 2.036
Norm of reciprocity 1.926
Socialization 2.455
Status seeking 1.744
Tie strength 1.645
Trust in network 1.448
Data analysis
To validate our proposed model, we used the two-stage
approach by testing the measurement model first followed
by the structural model (Hair et al., 2017) which is common
in any study using Partial Least Square (PLS) analysis. We
chose PLS as it is suitable for a complex modelling com-
prising of both reflective and formative constructs (Hair et
al. Jr, 2017; Hair et al., 2019). In this study, we used the
repeated indicator approach to examine the reflective-for-
mative HCM of user factor and online environment factor.
This approach is suitable for the reflective formative type II
modelling and also most appropriate when the lower order
constructs have similar number of indicators and the higher
order constructs are exogenous variables (Duarte & Amaro,
2018). The lower order reflective constructs which com-
prised of altruism, socialization, status seeking, information
sharing, trust in network, homophily, norm of reciprocity
and tie strength were first assessed for reliability and valid-
ity. Afterwards, the higher order formative constructs of
user factors and online environment factors was analysed
considering the weights of all lower order components,
multicollinearity and redundancy analysis. Subsequent sub-
headings provide a detailed explanation.
Assessing the reflective lower order constructs
To evaluate the lower order reflective constructs, we
checked the internal consistency, convergent and discrimi-
nant validity (Ramayah et al., 2018). Internal consistency
was measured using Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability
(CR) and rho_A. Convergent validity was tested using fac-
tor loadings and average variance extracted (AVE). The dis-
criminant validity was gauged using Heterotrait-Monotrait
Ratio of Correlations (HTMT). In this view, we realised that
all the factor loadings except IS 3, IS5, FNA 1, 2, 11, and
12 were above the threshold value of 0.7. As such, loadings
below 0.7 were deleted (See Table  3). Furthermore, AVE,
CR, CA and rho_A were above the recommended threshold
of 0.5, 0.7, and 0.7, respectively. We realised no issue of
discriminant validity since the HTMT values were all below
0.85 (See Table 4).
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Current Psychology
Assessing the higher order constructs (formative
constructs)
The reflective constructs and formative constructs do not
use the same method of assessment. In the formative con-
structs, the convergent validity, collinearity issues and the
relevance and significance of the outer weights that formed
the formative constructs are assessed (Ramayah et al.,
2018). In the case where the outer weight is not significant,
researchers are encouraged to use the outer loading as far as
it is above 0.50 (Ramayah et al., 2018). Firstly, we ran the
redundancy analysis using a single global item and realise
that we had no issues of convergent validity as the values
of the path coefficient demonstrate a sufficient convergent
validity were user factor (0.762) and online environment
factor (0.845) that were above the recommended value of
0.70 (Ramayah et al., 2018), (See Table  5). Furthermore,
multicollinearity was not an issue since all the outer VIF
were below the cut-off point of 3.3 (Hair et al., 2019), (See
Table 6). Additionally, the outer weights showed a signifi-
cant value for the four dimensions of user factor as well as
online environment factors (p < 0.001), (See Table 7). This
implies that the indicator weights were significant and rel-
evant. Thus, their contributionsto their respective construct
were evident.
The structural model assessment
We followed the recommendation of Hair Jr et al. (2017) in
assessing the structural model. Firstly, we tested structural
model’s VIF since the computation of the path coefficient
that connects the constructs were based on regression analy-
ses. This process helps researchers to ascertain if collinear-
ity issues does not taint the regression results. The predictors
VIF values did not exceed the threshold of 3.3, suggesting
no collinearity issues (See Table 8) (Hair Jr, et al., 2017).
Secondly, we assessed the relevance and significance of the
structural model (beta, β), T-value, effect size (f2), predic-
tive relevance (Q2), and the coefficient of determination
(R2). The bootstrapping method with a resampling of 5000
on a one tail test option was used to estimate the significance
of the path coefficient.
Results
As shown in Table 8, user factor positively predicted fake
news sharing (β = 0.228, p < 0.001), lending support to H1.
Additionally, just as predicted, the online environmen-
tal factor also significantly predicted fake news sharing
behaviour (β = 0.408, p < 0.001). This supported H2 (See
Fig.  2). With regards to effect size, the threshold of 002,
Current Psychology

Table 3  Convergent validity (Lower order reflective constructs)

Second-order construct Items Outer Loading CA rho_A CR AVE M SD
Altruism ALT1 0.742 0.832 0.835 0.881 0.598 4.135 0.722
ALT2 0.794 4.161 0.710
ALT3 0.796 4.053 0.784
ALT4 0.775 3.980 0.812
ALT5 0.759 3.847 0.869
Information Sharing IS1 0.859 0.766 0.767 0.865 0.682 4.086 0.750
IS2 0.840 4.204 0.704
IS3 (Deleted) 0.406 3.512 1.002
IS4 0.777 3.957 0.783
IS5 (Deleted) 0508 3.195 1.065
Socialization SOC 1 0.775 0.835 0.836 0.883 0.602 3.955 0.798
SOC 2 0.773 3.718 0.955
SOC 3 0.811 3.758 0.872
SOC 4 0.765 3.898 0.812
SOC 5 0.755 3.762 0.928
Status seeking SS1 0.741 0.872 0.876 0.907 0.663 3.547 1.038
SS2 0.845 3.281 1.106
SS3 0.855 3.095 1.116
SS4 0.776 3.090 1.104
SS5 0.848 3.259 1.081
Trust in Network TRN1 0.812 0.887 0.888 0.922 0.746 3.159 0.984
TRN2 0.749 3.141 0.992
TRN3 0.804 3.237 0.944
TRN4 0.872 3.310 0.955
Homophily HOMP1 0.812 0.881 0.881 0.918 0.737 3.549 0.906
HOMP2 0.883 3.454 0.963
HOMP3 0.868 3.396 1.008
HOMP4 0.869 3.430 0.973
Norm of reciprocity NORM 1 0.802 0.806 0.805 0.873 0.634 3.323 1.007
NORM 2 0.835 3.334 1.058
NORM 3 0.834 3.314 1.021
NORM 4 0.850 3.545 0.913
Tie strength TS1 0.839 0.751 0.751 0.858 0.668 3.638 0.869
TS2 0.763 3.476 0.952
TS3 0.765 3.722 0.867
Fake news sharing FNS1 0.747 0.934 0.937 0.946 0.686 3.217 1.085
FNS2 0.818 3.115 1.064
FNS3 0.859 2.988 1.114
FNS4 0.859 2.953 1.133
FNS5 0.861 3.006 1.140
FNS6 0.801 3.020 1.112
FNS7 0.822 2.827 1.193
FNS8 0.853 2.765 1.171
Fake news awareness FNA 1 (Deleted) 0.582 0.782 0.872 0.865 0.667 3.756 0.981
FNA 2 (Deleted) 0.235 3.756 0.981
FNA 3 0.783 3.756 0.981
FNA 4 0.821 3.756 0.981
FNA 5 0.795 3.756 0.981
FNA 6 0.812 3.756 0.981
FNA 7 0.798 3.756 0.981
FNA 8 0.777 3.756 0.981
FNA 10 0.882 3.756 0.981
FNA 11 (Deleted) 0.421 3.756 0.981
FNA 12 (Deleted) 0.422 3.756 0.981

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Table 4  Discriminant validity Heterotrait–Monotrait (HTMT)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1. Altruism
2. Fake news awareness 0.384
3. Fake news sharing 0.291 0.536
4. Homophily 0.440 0.402 0.496
5. Information sharing 0.778 0.319 0.170 0.462
6. Norm of reciprocity 0.278 0.465 0.548 0.675 0.282
7. Socialization 0.667 0.488 0.441 0.579 0.771 0.545
8. Status seeking 0.397 0.600 0.625 0.486 0.276 0.549 0.632
9. Tie strength 0.355 0.325 0.308 0.662 0.472 0.672 0.504 0.240
10. Trust in network 0.246 0.472 0.476 0.487 0.155 0.565 0.431 0.428 0.414

Table 5  Redundancy analysis (Convergent validity of formative con- effect size ranged from small to moderate. After realizing
structs) the effect size, we checked the cross-validated redundancy
Construct Global item Beta value measure (Q2) to evaluate the model’s predictive relevance
User factor USF 0.762 (Hair et al., 2017). This outcome showed the Q2 was above
Online environment factor ONF 0.845
zero (Q2 = 0.214 > 0), suggesting that our model has a good
predictive relevance. Overall, we realised that our model
Table 6  Collinearity test (formative constructs)
explains 42% of the variance in people’s fake news sharing
Higher order Lower order Outer VIF
behaviour (See Fig. 2). This variance is termed substantial
User factors Altruism 1.223
based on the rule of Cohen (1988) were 0.26, 0.13 and 0.02
Information Sharing 1.456
Socialization 2.224
is seen as substantial, moderate and weak level of predictive
Status seeking 1.567 accuracy. Additionally, Falk and Miller (1992) recommend
Online environment factors Trust in Network 1.689 that R2 values should be equal or greater than 0.10 in order
Homophily 1.345 for the variance explained of a given construct to be deemed
Norm of reciprocity 1.878 adequate.
Tie strength 1.112 The moderation hypotheses (H3 and H4) proposed that
the relationship between user factor and online environment
0.015 and 0.35 have been suggested as small, moderate factor with fake news sharing will be weaker when fake
and large effect (Cohen, 1988). The results suggest that the news awareness becomes higher. Results of the interaction

Table 7  The relevance and significance of the indicator’s weight

Higher order constructs Lower order constructs (formative indicators) Outer Weight value Std. Error t-value P-value 95% BCa CI
LB UUB
User factors Altruism 0.336 0.015 22.019 0.0000 0.312 0.363
Information Sharing 0.218 0.011 19.428 0.0000 0.201 0.238
Socialization 0.378 0.014 26.922 0.0000 0.357 0.403
Status seeking 0.333 0.023 14.311 0.0000 0.357 0.403
Online environment factors Trust in Network 0.336 0.016 21.221 0.0000 0.312 0.364
Homophily 0.379 0.014 27.587 0.0000 0.358 0.404
Norm of reciprocity 0.330 0.013 25.701 0.0000 0.311 0.354
Tie strength 0.228 0.011 20.215 0.0000 0.21 0.247

Table 8  Results of path coefficient, Q2 and f2

Relationship Beta Stan- T-value 95% BCa CI Q2 f2 VIF Decision
dard
error
LB UB
User Factor -> Fake News Sharing 0.228 0.048 4.750*** 0.149 0.305 0.214 0.069 1.478 Accepted
Online environment factor -> Fake News Sharing 0.408 0.045 9.031*** 0.327 0.475 - 0.154 1.467 Accepted
User factors *fake news awareness -> Fake news sharing -0.187 0.039 2.921** -0.141 -0.088 - 0.168 - Accepted
Online environment factors*fake news awareness -> Fake -0.285 0.039 4.816*** -0.241 -0.098 - 0.321 - Accepted
news sharing
* Significant at p < 0.05, ** at p < 0.01, and *** at p < 0.001

13
Current Psychology
Fig. 2  The structural model
Fig. 3  The moderating effect of fake news awareness on the relation-
ship between user factor and fake news sharing
term representing user factor and fake news awareness
was negatively significant (β= -0.187, p < 0.01). This sup-
ports H3. The second interaction terms of online environ-
ment factor*fake news awareness, with fake news sharing
behaviour serving as endogenous variable, was negatively
significant (β= -0.285, p < 0.001) as well. This supports H4.
Figures 3 and 4 further clarifies these results.
Fig. 4  The moderating effect of fake news awareness on the relation-
ship between online factor and fake news sharing
Discussions
Our study contributes to literature as it suggests that both
intrinsic and extrinsic factors have significant effects on
fake news sharing. Social media users are motivated to
share fake news because of their inner motives, as well as
the influence of the network members itself, viz. the online
environment. In this, we extend beyond studies that argue
13

that fake news sharing should either be mainly understood
via user motivation (Apuke & Omar, 2021a), or online envi-
ronmental factors (Duffy et al., 2019; Goh et al., 2019).
Past studies tend to examine the multifaceted concept of
user motivation and online environment according to each
dimension that makes up the concept. To examine user
motivation, for example, past research examined multiple
dimensions of motivation such as information-seeking, self-
representation, altruism, entertainment individually as a sin-
gle factor. Unlike past studies, we combined the dimensions
to become a key factor representing intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation. In doing so, we treated the key variables as the
higher-order-constructs and established their measurement
using PLS analysis. We found support for the effects of both
user motivation (intrinsic factor) and online environmental
(extrinsic factor) on fake news sharing.
When the results were compared, we found that online
environmental factor has stronger influence than user moti-
vation in influencing fake news sharing. This means social
interaction in the online setting has motivated social media
users to share fake news and this factor contributed the most
in this study. Meanwhile, users’ motivation effect on fake
news sharing was low but significant. This discovery sug-
gests that pointing to users factor alone as the predictors to
fake news sharing is insufficient because the temptations to
share fake news are greater for the medium than the user.
Our study found that the influence of fake news aware-
ness is significant to mitigate the effects of user motivation
and online environment on fake news sharing. It was found
that fake news sharing was lower for those who have high
fake news awareness while it was higher for those who have
low awareness. This implies that fake news awareness can
significantly reduce fake news sharing on social media.
Hence, fake news awareness can be seen as an effective
measure to curtail the spread of fake news.
Educating the public is key to this prevention strategy
(Ren et al., 2023). Research has shown support for the the
importance of digital and information literacy in educating
the public (Nistor & Zadobrischi, 2022). Digital literacy is
a significant strategy to aid people to distinguish between
accurate and false news (Soetekouw & Angelopoulos, 2022;
Guess et al., 2020) and hence help curtail the spread of fake
news (Lee, 2018). Some scholars use the term ‘information
literacy’ to signify the ability to obtain, understand, evalu-
ate, and use information (Tifferet, 2021). Studies found that
information literacy increased the probability of people
identifying false news (Tandoc & Kim, 2022; Jones-Jang
et al., 2021) as the ability to detect fake news depends on
their critical reasoning (Pennycook & Rand, 2019). This is
regarded as a more powerful way of reducing fake news
spread than correcting misleading news (Lee, 2018). Our
study supports these assertions. We found the significant
13
Current Psychology
role of fake news awareness in reducing fake news sharing.
Hence, our emphasis is on educating the people to increase
fake news awareness which in turn reduce fake news shar-
ing on social media.
Theoretical contributions
Our study found that user motivation has significant influ-
ence on fake news sharing and hence the assumptions of
UGT are still relevant to explaining the reasons for fake
news spread in social media. Past studies have heavily
relied on UGT as they found consistent support for the
influence of user motivation on fake news sharing (Apuke
& Omar, 2020, 2021a). In addition to this internal factor,
our study also found support for external factor as online
environment effect on fake news sharing was found signifi-
cant. Our findings are consistent with the assertions made
by past research, using SCT perspective, that trust in net-
work, homophily, norm of reciprocity and tie strength were
the predictors to fake news sharing (Duffy et al., 2019; Goh
et al., 2019). Hence, our study found support for both UGT
and SCT. In addition, we treated fake news awareness as a
moderating factor in order to uncover whether it can act as
an intervention to curtail the spread of fake news. The inclu-
sion of fake news awareness extends the model for fake
news sharing, and hence contribute to our understanding of
the fake news predictors and the preventive measure.
Practical implications
Based on these findings, we cannot emphasize enough the
importance of digital and information literacy, and this
must be introduced at early ages. A recent report suggests
that 44% of those between 8 and 11 years old and 87% of
those between 12 and 15 years old use social media sites
since the majority of them own tablet and smartphones
by then (Chaffey, 2021). Hence, we suggest that digital
and information literacy should be introduced in the early
years of primary school curriculum. We realized that
digital literacy programmes at Malaysian schools mainly
focus on technology competency, especially on how to
use computer technology and internet applications and
less attention is given on the competency to evaluate
online information and content. We witness today that
digitalization of all sectors – including the education
system – has become an important agenda for Malaysia
and many other countries. As this development is ram-
pant at the global setting, our findings could be extended
to global context which shows similar upward trend for
digital transformation. It is of great importance for our
young generations, who are the global citizens, to be dig-
itally literate - both at technical and content levels - to
Current Psychology
protect themselves from falling into the problematic fake
news sharing behaviour, and eventually to help curtail the
spread when they move into adulthood.
Limitations
This study has some limitations. Firstly, the findings were
derived from a one-off survey which has limitations when
it comes to drawing causal conclusions. Future research
is needed to study fake news sharing across different time
series to understand better how it is affected by increasing
awareness of fake news over time. Secondly, Malaysia has
28.4  million Internet users as of 2021 (Statista Research
Department, 2022) and hence a sample size of 451 used in
this study is relatively small. Although it meets the require-
ment of Krejcie and Morgan formula calculated at 95% of
CL and 5% of CI, future research may consider to increase
the sample size which could somewhat reflect a large-scale
study. Thirdly, we have to admit the limitation of our crowd-
sourced data collection method that could lead to sampling
bias which in turn lead to unrepresentativeness of sample.
Nevertheless, our sample distribution is almost similar to
the distribution of Malaysian population which could mini-
mize the problem of generalizability to a certain extent.
Fourthly, this study focuses on the Malaysian context.
Although fake news sharing can be assumed as a universal
phenomenon, future research can validate the findings by
employing a cross-countries or cross-cultural study to bet-
ter understand this global threat. Lastly, this study asserted
that fake news awareness could act as an effective measure
to curb fake news spread. Hence, future research is needed
to study fake news sharing across different time series to
understand better the effect of an increasing awareness of
fake news over time.
Conclusion
Our study provides insights into possible solutions to
tackle the growing threat of fake news. By implica-
tion, both intrinsic and extrinsic factors predicted fake
news sharing, and the latter has greater influence than
the former. It is also concluded that fake news awareness
reduces fake news sharing on social media. While this
study supports the view that fake news proliferation is
due to human behaviour, it also suggests that people are
the key players to stop the spread of fake new by having
adequate knowledge and skills in detecting fake news on
social media.
Acknowledgements  This study acknowledges the support received
from Universiti Sains Malaysia, Research University (RU) Grant
(1001/PCOMM/8016112).
Declarations
Conflict of interest  None declared.
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