Analysis On Influencing Factors Of User Information Demand Under Public Crisis

Emergencies are small probability complex events with insufficient precursors before the event,and they are highly destructive and potential secondary hazards after the event.It is difficult to take the traditional scheme to deal with them,which has the characteristics of variability and unpredictability.After an emergency,the public is affected by uncertainty and negative emotions and urgently needs to obtain event related information.However,in the emergency environment with serious information asymmetry,users’ information needs have the characteristics of immediacy,diversity and variability.It is difficult to use the traditional mode to transmit emergency information to the public to meet users’ information needs.Therefore,insight into the user’s information needs and influencing factors after the occurrence of public crisis events is not only an important premise to meet the public’s emergency information needs,alleviate the user’s uncertainty psychology,convey the potential risks caused by public crisis events,and improve the public’s risk awareness,but also one of the important links of emergency management.This paper studies the characteristics of users’ information demand and its influencing factors after the occurrence of public crisis.Based on the research results of emergency information demand at home and abroad,guided by fine processing possibility model,information demand theory,use and satisfaction theory,semi-structured interview,questionnaire survey Structural equation model and fuzzy qualitative comparative analysis are used to build the influencing factor model of user information demand,explore the characteristics and influencing factors of public emergency information demand under the background of public crisis,and provide relevant countermeasures and suggestions for the supply of emergency information demand and the satisfaction of public emergency information demand.This paper mainly studies from the following aspects:(1)Based on the grounded theory,the content text of the semi-structured interview and the relevant research results at home and abroad are open coded,spindle coded and selective coded,and the characteristics of users’ information demand and its influencing factors in the context of public crisis events are extracted from the text data.The results show that information quality,source credibility,personal information literacy,user characteristics,crisis events and other factors constitute important influencing factors of users’ information needs;In the context of public emergencies,users’ information needs are divided into three dimensions:cognitive needs,security needs and emotional needs.(2)Based on the characteristics of users’ information demand and its influencing factors derived from grounded theory,from the perspective of internal causes,the relationship between the influencing factors of users’ information demand in the context of public crisis is verified by using fine processing possibility model,questionnaire survey method and structural equation model.The results show that information quality(central path)and source reliability(peripheral path)are two paths affecting users’ information demand;Information timeliness and source credibility have significant positive effects on cognitive needs;Information timeliness and source credibility have a significant positive impact on security needs;Information validity and source credibility have significant positive effects on emotional needs;Gender,age,education and other user characteristics have no significant impact on users’ information needs;Personal information literacy plays a negative regulatory role between information effectiveness and security information needs,source credibility and security information needs,and crisis events play a positive regulatory role between information effectiveness and cognitive information needs.(3)Based on the characteristics of user information demand and its influencing factors obtained from the grounded theory,from the perspective of configuration,this paper uses the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method to identify the condition combination of the influencing factors of user information demand,and excavates the impact mechanism of user information demand under public emergencies as a whole.The results show that the cognitive needs,security needs and emotional needs of users are not affected by a single factor,but by the combination of antecedent variables such as information effectiveness,information timeliness,source credibility,personal information literacy and information satisfaction of crisis events.There are five conditional configurations for users to trigger cognitive information needs,among which the original coverage of combination A1 with high information timeliness * high source reliability is the highest;There are six conditional configurations for users to trigger security information requirements,among which the original coverage of combination B1 with high information timeliness * high source reliability is the highest;There are five conditional configurations for users to trigger emotional information needs in the context of public emergencies,among which the original coverage of combination C1 high crisis event information satisfaction * high information effectiveness is the highest.Based on the coding of interview text and literature,from the perspective of internal causes and configuration,this study explores the characteristics and influencing factors of user information demand in the context of public emergency,further enriches the research results of emergency information management and emergency information demand,provides a new perspective for future research,and provides a reference for the early warning,response and aftermath of emergency in China.