Research On The Mechanism And Influencing Factors Of Collaborative Information Searching Behavior Of Project Team

Due to the increasing complexity of the task users confronted and deficiency of expertise and search skills,it is very common for users sharing mutual goal and interest to choose to work in a group to search for information.Currently,there is few research focusing on the collaborative information seeking behavior of project team in the process of fulfilling the task.Therefore,it is necessary to conduct in-depth research on the characteristics and influencing factors of collaborative information seeking behavior of project team in a specific searching environment.After explaining the concept of collaborative information seeking,this paper analyzed the general process of collaborative information seeking behavior of project team members and the role of main influencing factors based on previous research about collaborative information seeking behavior and its influencing factors.Firstly,the comprehensive collaborative information seeking behavior model of project team was built on the basis of Kuhlthau et al.’s theory of information seeking process and Shah’s model of collaborative information seeking behavior.Through interviews and questionnaires,this paper explored the collaborative information seeking behavior mechanism of project team members in the process of information seeking,during which the paper built the influencing factor model of collaborative information search behavior of the project team and validated the hypothesis of the influencing factors of the model.The results indicate that the triggers of collaborative information seeking are problems arising from external factors and the general type of collaborative information seeking is that:The person in charge divides the task into several sub-tasks to other different members,and members find some information together and discuss the searching strategies and members share the results which were edited in electronic form with concluding work.In the process of collaborative information seeking,the leader and core members of the project team are of the greatest contribution.Compared to individual information seeking,collaboration in information seeking have the greatest impact on the selection of search strategy and information sources,and the main cause of the impact is the communication between the members and understanding and using of the sharing information.The study also found out that individual factors,including task cognitive and cooperative attitude have a significant impact on member’s intention to collaborate.External factors including the quality of communication and collaboration awareness are influenced by mode of the cooperation and have positive impact on member’s intention to collaborate.In addition,collaboration awareness positively influences on communication quality.