Abstract:

By interviewing college students in Chongqing, this paper deduced the main indicators which had impact on interpersonal relationship utilization in daily information seeking. Based on this, a model of influencing factors was developed for interpersonal relationship utilization in daily information seeking, and a presurvey table was conducted as well. In this study, data of 328 valid samples were collected from several representative colleges in Chongqing. By using exploratory factor analysis, this study exacted common factors and built an initial model. After that, the model was verified and optimized with structural equation model. This study finds that there are 6 factors which influence the interpersonal relationship utilization in college students' daily information seeking. Moreover, trust, information quality and problem context are found to be direct influencing factors, while relationship strength, personal characteristics and life mastery are indirect ones. Meanwhile, there have been strong interactions among relationship strength, personal characteristics and problem context. According to the regression coefficient, the influencing strength of all factors have been ranked sequentially as problem context, relationship strength, trust, information quality, personal characteristics and life mastery. It is also concluded that problem context, relationship strength, trust and information quality are dominant factors, while the influence of personal characteristics and life mastery is relatively weak.

Keywords: Information behavior, Everyday life information behavior, Information seeking, College students, Interpersonal relationship utilization, Model of influencing factors