Wilson Information Behavior Model

Tom Wilson's models of information behaviour, first sketched in his 1981 paper 'On user studies and information needs' and revisited in his 1999 'Models in information behaviour research,' provide an overarching map of how information behaviour arises and unfolds. Information need is treated not as a primitive but as something secondary to more basic human needs, emerging from a person-in-context. That need drives information-seeking behaviour, but the path from need to seeking is shaped by intervening variables — psychological, demographic, role-related, environmental and source-related — that act as barriers or enablers, and by activating mechanisms drawn from theories of stress and coping, risk and reward, and self-efficacy. The resulting seeking can take several modes, and information processing and use feed back to alter the original need.