Investigating motivations and expectations of asking a question in social Q&A

Abstract

Social Q&A (SQA) has rapidly grown in popularity, impacting people’s information seeking behaviors. Although previous research has examined how people seek and share information within SQA, fundamental questions of user motivations and expectations for information seeking remain. This paper applies the theoretical framework of uses and gratification theory to investigate the motivations for SQA use, and adapts relevance criteria from library and information science (LIS) literature to investigate expectations with regard to evaluation of content within SQA site Yahoo! Answers. A total of 75 Yahoo! Answers users participated in a survey that asked them about reasons, methods, and expectations relating to asking questions within the SQA site. Findings indicate the importance of motivations and expectations in fulfilling both cognitive and socio–affective needs based upon the type of task performed. These findings provide encouraging evidence that understanding the interrelationship between the motivations behind and expectations of asking a question can inform a more holistic framework to assess information.

“You don't feel that you're so far away”: Information sharing, technology use, and settlement of international student immigrants

“…Even with these differences, clear roles emerge for ICTs in supporting the informational, social, and emotional needs of our interviewees, a significance we believe has strong transferability to the broader populations of international students and immigrants across North America. The importance and significance of such roles echoes literature on social and emotional support factors in online information sharing among many other populations (Ardichvili, 2008;Choi et al, 2014;Haythornthwaite, 2006;McLure Wasko & Faraj, 2000, 2005Worrall & Oh, 2013), further implying the potential trustworthiness of these findings. We encourage further research into the informational, social, and emotional roles of ICTs for international students and other immigrants to further confirm and expand on our findings.…”

“…A "share and share alike" mentality is one we believe LIS researchers and professionals should encourage and support as part of facilitating international students' information behavior and practices and use of ICTs, drawing on our findings and other studies of motivations for online information sharing (e.g. Ardichvili, 2008;Choi et al, 2014;Oh & Syn, 2015;Worrall et al, 2018;Worrall & Oh, 2013) to further inform information system and service design, implementation, and use.…”

Supporting answerers with feedback in social Q&A

“…Social Q&A services create a participation-based community for users to ask questions and others to answer them [16]. Study of Q&A has primarily focused on predicting the quality of questions and answers [1,2,11] and understanding user motivations [3,4,6]. Supporting students within social Q&A by integrating learning is a research area that holds great potential for educational outcomes [16].…”

Factors that affect asker's pay intention in trilateral payment‐based social Q&A platforms: From a benefit and cost perspective

“…Therefore, investigating the factors that trigger askers' paying intention is of great importance for researchers and practitioners, especially while the payment‐based social Q&A platform is still in its infancy. Previous studies have offered some insights into various antecedents that motivate askers' behavioral intention on social Q&A platforms (Choi, Kitzie, & Shah, , ; Choi & Shah, , ; Jeon & Rieh, ). However, most of the prior studies were conducted in the context of a free Q&A platform, and therefore fail to fully interpret the possible benefit‐ and cost‐related triggers of askers' pay intention, as the tradeoff between cost and benefit on trilateral Q&A platforms has surpassed the simple conflict of search cost and knowledge value in free‐based Q&A systems (Choi et al, ; Kitzie et al, ).…”