What can you perceive? Understanding user’s information quality judgment on academic social networking sites

Abstract

Introduction. Considering the overwhelming amount of scientific information available on academic social networking sites, the purpose of this paper is to explore how users perceive and judge the information quality. Method. Drawing upon the dual-process model, we theorised that the results of perception depend on the influence of both content cues and context-related cues. Analysis. We conducted two controlled experiments to verify our hypotheses. Results. Our findings indicated that, (1) higher levels of information quality can be perceived with high content value than with low content value, and there was an interaction effect between content value and question type (Experiment 1); (2) three kinds of context-related cues (authority cues, peer cues, and recommendation cues) demonstrated the significant main effect on perceived information quality, and there was an interaction effect among these three cues (Experiment 2). Conclusions. This study contributes by addressing both central and peripheral cues based on a dual-process model, different from previous research which has mainly been confined to examining the external cues' effects. Our findings not only can deepen the comprehension about how users perceive and judge the information quality in academic social networking sites, but also can inform platform developers about the design of the interface and the information system.