A Study of Web Searching Behaviors - Comparing the Effort-Accuracy Tradeoff Model with the Social Cognitive Theory

The rapid growth of Web makes Web users or the consumers may waste a lot of time and efforts to search for information. This becomes one of the major barriers to electronic commerce. In this study, we have applied the effort-accuracy tradeoff model (Johnson & Payne, 1985; Payne, Bettman, and Johnson, 1993) and the Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1986) to study WWW search decisions. Specifically, we attempt to understand if there is a tradeoff between effort and accuracy as well as the impact of self-efficacy on the tradeoff model in Web searching behavior. The result shows that self-efficacy is an important factor to Web search accuracy. People with high efficacy yield more accurate result in the search. In addition, the tradeoff between effort-saving and accuracy only exists in the low efficacy individuals. In contrast, for high-efficacy people, there is no significant change in efficacy, effort expended, and accuracy in the trials. Furthermore, the emphasis of accuracy will increase the effort expended in low efficacy group but not in high efficacy group.