Trust in government/media (formal) information: We asked about respondents' agreement with three statements (Table S1 ). Responses were made on categorical five-point scales ranging from ''strongly disagree'' to ''strongly agree''. Scalability of these three items was assessed using Cronbach's alpha, which at 0.61 indicated that the internal consistency between items was low, but acceptable. However, to minimize potential measurement error arising from the low internal consistency, this construct was treated as a latent variable in the subsequent analysis [40] . A latent variable is a concept opposed to an observed variable. A latent variable can not be measured directly but is inferred from one or more variables that are directly measured (observed variable) while an observed variable can be directly measured with a specific question or item or observed by the researchers. For example, an ''attitude'' is a concept that is difficult to measure directly with single items but can be inferred from various questions asking about different aspects of that attitude. Then within the analysis ''attitude'' is treated as the latent variable while the questions used to infer it are the observed variables.