Toward a unified model of human information behavior: an equilibrium perspective

What is it about?

This paper considers human information behavior as a reflection of the relationship between information supply and demand at a specific space-time (context), and explores how the equilibrium and disequilibrium between information supply and demand create, limit, and change human information behavior.

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Why is it important?

The equilibrium framework enables future research to explore human information behavior from three perspectives: 1) Stages: group the classical concepts (e.g., ASK, uncertainty) into different stages (i.e., start state, process, goal state) and see how they interact with each other within and across different stages; 2) Forces: explore information behaviors and information-related abilities as information supply and demand forces, and see how different forces influence each other and jointly motivate people to pursue the equilibriums between outside world and mental model. 3) Short-term and long-term: study the connections between short-term information seeking and long-term ability improvement at both theoretical and empirical levels.