Who will you ask? An empirical study of interpersonal task information seeking

Abstract

Information seeking behavior is an important form of human behavior. Past literature in information science and organizational studies has employed the cost-benefit framework to analyze seekers' information-source choice decision. Conflicting findings have been discovered with regard to the importance of source quality and source accessibility in seekers' choices. With a focus on interpersonal task information seeking, this study proposes a seeker-source-information need framework to understand the source choice decision. In this framework, task importance, as an attribute of information need, is introduced to moderate seekers' cost-benefit calculation. Our empirical study finds that in the context of interpersonal task information seeking, first, the least effort principle might not be adequate in explaining personal source choices; rather, a quality-driven perspective is more adequate, and cost factors are of much less importance. Second, the seeker-source relationship is not significant to source choices. Third, the nature of information need, especially task importance, can modify seekers' source choice decisions.

The role of social capital in selecting interpersonal information sources

“…relationship go unsupported (Xu, Tan, & Yang, 2006;Zimmer et al, 2008). As with these more recent studies, this relationship was not supported, β = 0.03, t = 0.36, p = 0.36.…”

The scope of external information-seeking under uncertainty: An individual-level study

“…As a consistent finding in the literature, high levels of uncertainty will cause increases in the requirements for information about the task, as well as in information-seeking behaviour (Xu et al, 2006). This influence of task uncertainty on information-seeking is especially important for R&D professionals in the context of new product development due to the high level of task uncertainty that predominates among research and development projects.…”

“…There are basically two categories of research in the literature, with one advocating the least effort principle (also named 'the law of least effort' by Gerstberger and Allen (1968), or 'a cost-benefit framework/calculus' in Xu et al (2006)) (e.g., Anderson et al, 2001;Fidel & Green, 2004;Gerstberger & Allen, 1968;Kwasitsu, 2003;O'Reilly, 1982;Yitzhaki & Hammershlag, 2004), and the other (the so-called 'quality-driven perspective' by Xu et al (2006), or 'the cost-benefit ratio perspective' by Bronstein and Baruchson-Arbib (2008)) suggesting that source quality could be more important (e.g., Bronstein & Baruchson-Arbib, 2008;Xu et al, 2006). The mix results in the past literature can be partly attributed to the information source categorisation adopted in these studies.…”

“…First, the present study is the first attempt to empirically explore the effect of task uncertainty on individuals' external information searches at the source portfolio level, whereas the literature focuses on use frequency within each of those external information sources (e.g., O'Reilly, 1982;Savolainen, 2008) or what factors affect an individ-0268-4012/$ -see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2010.08.005 ual's selection and usage of one information source over another in a given situation (e.g., Anderson et al, 2001;Xu, Tan, & Yang, 2006). In doing so, this paper introduces breadth and depth as two components of the openness of individuals' external information search strategies.…”

Horizon informationnel sur la formation et le travail chez de jeunes adultes non diplômés en situation de précarité

“…Cela amène à appréhender la source d'information comme une sorte de dépôt (repository) qui draine et pourvoit de l'information potentielle (Xu, Tan et Yang, 2006).…”