A THEORY OF INSTINCTIVE INFORMATION SHARING BEHAVIOUR

Abstract

Information sharing plays a critical role in our society today. It provides the basis for people to understand the world better. Without information sharing, an individual cannot gain more knowledge from others.

This thesis seeks to unravel factors affecting human information sharing behaviour. Three streams of literature were reviewed to identify important determinants of intention to share information: (1) the social exchange perspective, (2) the social capital perspective, and (3) the egoistic and altruistic motivation perspective. In addition to the above three perspectives, a new theoretical perspective is proposed in this thesis. This perspective examines the instinctive aspect of information sharing behaviour.

A survey methodology was adopted for this thesis. The survey instrument was developed using a process of conceptual construct validation. There were three studies for this thesis. For the first study, the questionnaire was administered to university students using online forums as the research context. For the second study, the questionnaire was administered at Amazon Mechanical Turk using social media as the research context. For the third study, the questionnaire was administered to university students using social media as the research context.

Results showed strong support for our conceptual framework. The results contribute towards building a theory of instinctive information sharing. In terms of methodology, this study offers validated measures for the examination of information sharing intention. In particular, the three studies developed and improved the measurement items for the new construct of need for information sharing. The findings help online forums and social media companies understand the information sharing behaviour of the users better. With this better understanding, they can improve the features of the platforms to encourage more useful information sharing.