Using information scent and need for cognition to understand online search behavior

The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent to which two theories, Information Scent and Need for Cognition, explain people's search behaviors when interacting with search engine results pages (SERPs). Information Scent, the perception of the value of information sources, was manipulated by varying the number and distribution of relevant results on the first SERP. Need for Cognition (NFC), a personality trait that measures the extent to which a person enjoys cognitively effortful activities, was measured by a standardized scale. A laboratory experiment was conducted with forty-eight participants, who completed six open-ended search tasks. Results showed that while interacting with SERPs containing more relevant documents, participants examined more documents and clicked deeper in the search result list. When interacting with SERPs that contained the same number of relevant results distributed across different ranks, participants were more likely to abandon their queries when relevant documents appeared later on the SERP. With respect to NFC, participants with higher NFC paginated less frequently and paid less attention to results at lower ranks than those with lower NFC. The interaction between NFC and the number of relevant results on the SERP affected the time spent on searching and a participant's likelihood to reformulate, paginate and stop. Our findings suggest evaluating system effectiveness based on the first page of results, even for tasks that require the user to view multiple documents, and varying interface features based on NFC.