Abstract

The innovation in digital technologies, such as social media, apps, and mobile devices, has creat-ed new information sources that overwhelm the human cognition with stimuli. These stimuli sent through technology (i.e., notifications, alerts, messages) occur when the users receive alerts on their devices (i.e., smartphones, laptops) from various apps that generate information and may divert their attention. The need to know effect is manifested on the human obsession to read every piece of information received despite its utility. The stimulus that contains information evokes cog-nitive process and may affect the human information behavior (HIB). However, the current cogni-tive research in information systems is limited to the isolated consideration of the specific types of behaviors in the computer-mediated context. Thus, the objective of this research is to investigate the impact of information stimuli generated by the digital technologies on the HIB. The infor-mation stimuli and HIB were conceptualized, and a new scale was developed. The paper presents results from a quantitative survey performed with 565 information workers that use multiple digital technologies. The results were analyzed with PLS-based Structural Equations Modeling. The re-sults indicate an elevated impact of information stimuli on the HIB and provide insights for re-searchers and practitioners.

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