A context‐based investigation into source use by information seekers

Naresh Kumar Agarwal, Yunjie (Calvin) Xu and Danny C.C. Poo

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2011, vol. 62, issue 6, 1087-1104

Abstract: An important question in information‐seeking behavior is where people go for information and why information seekers prefer to use one source type rather than another when faced with an information‐seeking task or need for information. Prior studies have paid little attention to contingent variables that could change the cost‐benefit calculus in source use. They also defined source use in one way or the other, or considered source use as a monolithic construct. Through an empirical survey of 352 working professionals in Singapore, this study carried out a context‐based investigation into source use by information seekers. Different measures of source use have been incorporated, and various contextual variables that could affect the use of source types have been identified. The findings suggest that source quality and access difficulty are important antecedents of source use, regardless of the source type. Moreover, seekers place more weight on source quality when the task is important. Other contextual factors, however, are generally less important to source use. Seekers also demonstrate a strong pecking order in the use of source types, with online information and face‐to‐face being the two most preferred types.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21513

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jamist:v:62:y:2011:i:6:p:1087-1104

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)1532-2890

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology from Association for Information Science & Technology
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().