Abstract:

Users’ information behavior in social Q&A context is one of crucial parts of Internet users’ information behavior research. The current related research pays much attention to some one specific mode of users’ information behavior whereas it lacks of studies on behavioral transferring across different types of information behavior. This paper focuses on the behavioral transferring from information adoption to sustained information seeking. This paper tries to explore the influencing factors affecting behavioral transferring and the transit process, as well as to propose the transition model in order to understand the transferring mechanism. Through the conceptual analysis of the transition model, this paper argues that there exists dualroute effects of users’ information adoption on sustainable information seeking in social Q&A: information adoption not only affects sustainable information seeking directly, but also indirectly affects it through the role of satisfaction. In addition, critical thinking selfefficacy can moderate negatively the positive influencing relationship between information adoption and sustainable information seeking. To better understand the transition process from information adoption to sustained information seeking in social Q&A, this paper analyzes the implications of the theoretical model as well. Finally, the research limitations as well as the related empirical work in future are also discussed.

Keywords: Social Q&A, User information behavior, Behavioral transferring, Information adoption, Information seeking, Conceptual analysis