A Region Comparative Study Of Rural Resident’s Information Demand And Information Behavior In China

The farmer-agriculture-rural issue is a significant problem in our society. During the process of modernization activities, the various differences of development strategies, natural endowment and location factors, etc. between urban and rural areas result in the pace and the momentum of development process vary from region to region, which widens the gap between urban and rural areas with an accelerating speed so that the problem of informatization in rural areas has become a weakness point of the whole country’s development, with a host of problems to solve.Whether it is farmer-agriculture-rural problem or informatization problem of rural areas, the core and main problem is related to farmers, which are the beneficial owners, users and communicators. However, the information capacity and consciousness of farmers is a vital factor for policies implementation and effect of information services as only knowing the subjective construction of farmers during the information utilization can we appraise policies and approaches effect of information services involving farmers, obtain the knowledge of individual features on farmers’ community, tackle with issues of information services involving farmers specifically. Moreover, not only diversity features exist between farmer individuals but the development process and issues vary from areas to areas.Thus, exploring farmers’ basic characteristics and rules of information needs and behaviors from different areas profoundly enhances revealing different problems on the process of information services and informatization involving farmers from different areas. Basing on the perspective of area, this article develops its research by conducting questionnaire survey on farmers’ information needs and behaviors, revealing features of information needs and cognitional preferences involving farmers from different areas, probing the basic cause for the diversity and countermeasures in light of comparatively analyzing different areas, to provide references for carrying out the classified construction of information services involving farmers.The article firstly summarizes the research status and features at home and abroad, maps out research ideas and the scheme of investigate and survey, then conducts questionnaire inquiry by categorizing the whole country into east, central and west parts according to different levels of economic development, and further obtains representative samples, at last presents features on farmers’ information needs and behaviors from different places in five perspectives of descriptive features, requirements cognitive of information, acts of information acquisition, behaviors of information utilization and satisfaction of information service. Additionally, through analyzing and researching data between different areas or the data of whole country comparatively, the author discovers the diversity structure of famers’ information requirements and behaviors in China, and then narrows the scope of influence factors on famers’ information requirements and behaviors, which at last leave obstacles of educated level, appealing of survive improvement, media creditability as key factors this work. Finally, combining the comparatively analyzing conclusions with influence factors, the author proposes relevant improvement suggestions and countermeasures which provide references for policies choice and implementation.