Preliminary Research of Information Overload from Information Search and Information Follow

Abstract

The major objective of this research is to test if two types of information overload are different: Information overload from searching for the information someone needs to search, and information overload from following all the information someone needs to follow. These two types of information overload may be labelled information search overload and information follow overload, corresponding to the concepts of information search and information follow. Using the data of a survey from a sample of about 1600 respondents across 50 states in the United States, the research identified 2 items corresponding to information search overload and information follow overload, and ran analyses including correlation and logistic regression with the 2 items separately as the dependent variables, and with some other items about consumers’ activities involving information as independent variables. Results of the various analyses suggest that information search overload and information follow overload are different, especially in terms of how they associate with different variables of consumer activities involving information, therefore indicate as a preliminary research that we may separate the two types of information overload in our future research.