Abstract:

Rural female residents as a community benefits the socioeconomic development of rural area considerably and also supports everyday life of rural families individually. Information seeking, at the same time, works as a premise for the interaction between rural female residents and rural social context. By employing field study in nine villages in Tianzhu county of Gansu province, Dongzhi county of Anhui province and Jinghai county of Tianjin, and grounded theory method, categories of information needs and the impacts they caused on information seeking behavior of rural female residents were analyzed in depth, and three intermediate variables between information needs and information seeking ways are recognized: cognitive ability, family and social roles, and living surroundings. Finally, a theoretical model on information seeking behaviors of rural female residents is proposed in this article.

Key words: Rural female residents, Information needs, Information seeking, Information behavior, Community informatics