Paper Title
An Overview of “Information Behavior Theories” and A Proposed Information-Seeking Model

Abstract
The paper attempts to highlight some of the information behavior theories including cognitive, psychological, social, ecological and spatial theories with the help of practical examples and critical views. The cognitive concept refers to the ‘user-centered’ view point of knowledge that human interact in isolation and ‘socio-cognitive’ view of information associated with social bonding of human interactions. The psychological view offers the detailed explanation of how individual information behavior is influenced by perceptions, cognition, emotions, motivation, personality and brain functioning. Several theories such as attribution theory, stress copying theory, information encountering and trait theory has presented to support the idea. Social theories mainly support the concept of constructionism and constructivism when it comes to an individual preference of seeking information on particular matter.The ecological and spatial theories pour some light on everyday information need and the variables of information sources. The author further proposes a model of information behavior after building an understanding of above mentioned theories. The model explains how the information need phenomena or influences impact the individual information-seeking pattern under the circumstances of different contexts/situation – resulting in the creation of an open i-planet (information-planet) and close i-planet. The model can be further explored and explained by empirical studies in future. Keywords - Information behavior, Information behavior model, Information behavior theories Theme/Session:Information Management/Knowledge Management