Study On Impacting Laws Of Social Media Users' Academic Information Seeking Behavior Given The Moderating Effect Of Information Need

Social media have attracted a large number of users since their emergence. They are not only social places for users to develop, maintain and expand the interpersonal relationships, but also information grounds with rich resources to provide users with a variety of information resources, which is beneficial to exchange and share information instantly among individuals with loose relationships. The application domains of social media extend continually. People have begun to pay attention to the academic value of social media and more and more individuals use social media in their academic information activities. Through the ways of publishing, recommendation, review, forwarding, sharing and seeking, social media can both enhance the communication among users and increase the visibility and usage of information content. In the context of social media, individuals can use the formal and authoritative information resources created by experts via library, and they also can use the informal and unconventional information resources created by the crowd through social media. However, the quality, credibility and authority of these informal and unconventional information resources are often questioned by people. Users' information behaviors present specific laws.Information need is the essential driving factor to promote users' information seeking behavior. Information seeking behavior is a kind of important information behavior, which is oriented to users' information need. The research on academic information seeking behavior of social media users focuses on the characteristics and laws of which users seek informal academic information resources in the social media to meet their own information needs. The development of social media provides users with extensive information spaces and they have more freedom and initiative to participate in the various academic information activities. Meanwhile, various types of information behaviors performed alternatively result in the complexity of the study on social media users'academic information seeking behavior. In order to reveal the impacting laws of social media users' academic information seeking behavior accurately and systematically, according to the different levels of users' information need, this study integrates the elaboration likelihood model, information adoption model, information systems success model and users'personality traits, and mainly investigates the impacting laws of social media users'academic information seeking behavior given the moderating effect of information need.From the perspective of information science, this study developed and tested the instrument of information need by the literature analysis, the interview and the questionnaire survey. And then, the instrument was employed in the survey of impacting factors of social media users'academic information seeking behavior to accurately and directly measure users'information need levels. Structural equation modelling was employed to test the research model of impacting factors of social media users'academic information seeking behavior given the moderating effect of information need. The statistical method of comparing means was employed to investigate the effects of individual differences on users'information seeking behavior and its impacting factors in terms of gender, age, position, filed, experience with academic research, experience with social media, roles of information users and personality traits. It compared users'different perceptions of academic information seeking behavior.Combining the elaboration likelihood model, information adoption model, information systems success model and personality traits model, this study placed information quality and service quality in the central route, and placed system quality and source credibility in the peripheral route. The results suggested that personality traits have differently significant effects on information quality, service quality, system quality and source credibility. Information quality, service quality and source credibility significantly affect information usefulness which in turn significantly impacts users'academic information seeking behavior. Information usefulness is affected by both the central route variables and the peripheral route variables. However, the effects of two routes are changed because of users'different levels of information need. When their academic information need is in a low level, the effect of system quality and source credibility (peripheral route) on information usefulness is stronger than without the moderating effect of information need. When their academic information need is in a high level, in the context of this study, the effect of information quality and service quality (central route) on information usefulness is not strong. On the contrary, when their academic information need is in a low level, the effect of information quality and service quality on information usefulness is stronger than without the moderating effect of information need. Additionally, social media users'perceptions of academic information seeking behavior and its impacting factors are different because of their differences in age, position, field, experience with academic research, experience with social media, roles of information users and personality traits. Nowadays, researchers and academic institutions have begun to use social media in their daily work and study. Large quantities of information resources are produced in the process of conducting relevant academic information activities. Nevertheless, the academic function of social media is still weak. Compared to those formal and conventional information sources released by the experts or the authority and reviewed strictly, social media can be used as an informal and unconventional academic information sources. Both types of information sources can inform and complement each other to meet users' different levels of information need together. This study has important theoretical and practical implications for the research on user information behavior, the continuous success of social media and the development of digital resources in academic library.This study is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [grant number:71373193].