Exploring the Influence Mechanism of Chinese Young Researchers' Academic Information Avoidance Behavior

Researchers can obtain and use information from different channels in the network era, and the explosive growth of information may lead to researchers' academic information avoidance behavior. However, the influence mechanisms of academic information avoidance behavior are unclear. Two studies were conducted to address this issue. In Study 1, we chose young researchers in universities as the research objects to summarize influencing factors including academic information overload, information independence, research task difficulty, time pressure, academic information literacy, negative emotions, and cognitive dissonance of academic information avoidance behavior using social cognitive theory (SCT) and grounded theory. In Study 2, we analyzed the different configuration and key characteristics of academic information avoidance behavior for young researchers using the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method. Our results showed that there were four configurations for the formation of academic information avoidance behavior, which were summarized into three types: "time-driven" with time pressure as the core condition, "information-cognitive-driven" with information independence and cognitive dissonance as the core condition, and "emotion-driven" with negative emotions as the core condition. Our study helps to enrich the theory of academic information avoidance behavior, and provides recommendations for young researchers and university libraries in academic research and information services.