2017 Volume 15 Issue 1 Pages 65-72
This study focused on the factors affecting the external information-seeking behavior related to public projects. We hypothesized that when people had the cognition that the result of an opinion expression could affect the acceptance decision on a public project, and when people appraised that the project was important to them, the frequency of the behavior was higher. However, the effect would be moderated if people felt that the time to seek information was limited or if they felt that they already had enough information to judge the acceptance. The prediction of the effect-cognition towards decision and the time pressure were examined in the first experiment and the prediction of the project importance and having enough information to judge acceptance were examined in the second experiment using a questionnaire. The results of this experiment supported our expectation except for having enough information to judge acceptance. It was shown that the effect-cognition towards decision affected the behavior directly, but the effect was moderated by time pressure in the first experiment. That is, participants in the high effect-cognition group answered that they sought external information than those in the low effect-cognition group. However, the tendency disappeared with high time pressure. Further, the project importance affected the behavior directly. However, having enough information did not moderate its effect in the second experiment. That is, participants in the high importance group answered that they sought external information more than those in the low importance group. We discuss how behavior in the future can be studied based on the experiment results.
