Abstract
Purpose: Attention resource is scarce. Organizing community activities in online forums faces the challenge of attracting users’ limited attention. Understanding how users of online forums allocate, maintain, and change their attentional focus and what features of online forms influence their attention behaviors is critical for effective information design. This paper seeks understanding of users’ attention behaviors and features when they participate in discussions in online forums. Design/methodology/approach: A conceptual model was established to explore the indicator system of attention’s measurement. The related attention data were collected from Alexa Access Statistics Tool and Katie community. Then this paper computed the correlation coefficient and regression relationship between the indicators of visual attention and cognitive attention. Thereafter this paper analyzed and discussed users’ attention behaviors and features in Internet forum. Findings: Relevant bivariate correlation analysis and regression analysis discovers that Internet forum's attention is mainly as visual attention in users’ early involvement. Attention resources can be transformed. In a deep participation, users’ cognitive attention is more significant. Meanwhile cognitive attention behaviors’ further development will lead to the phenomenon that cognitive attention input is prone to increase faster in the early duration. That means in-depth discussion and interaction are more likely to appear in the early stages of participation. Research limitations/implications: There are some limitations about this study. The indicators are not comprehensive enough because factors affecting the distribution of attention resources in Internet forums are complex. We didn’t distinguish different types of Internet forums when we collected the relevant data. Future research will focus more on how to obtain comprehensive attention data. Originality/value: T his paper shows a new perspective that we can find users’ attention behaviors and features using the attention data from its mapping object, which can help operators of portals and Internet communities to attract users’ limited attention.
Highlights
Our society has entered an era of attention economy (Davenport & Beck, 2001)
Statistical results indicate that the information contents and users’ experience provided by Internet forums can better catch users’ visual attention
(2) The distribution of visual attention is related to the peculiarity of website and users’ experience
Summary
Our society has entered an era of attention economy (Davenport & Beck, 2001). The most pressing issue is that people's attention is not sufficient to satisfy the needs of business and society. One way to achieve this is by designing information structures and presentation purposefully for attention attraction. Such design can be informed by understanding how users allocate attention and decide what to focus on from moment to moment. Such insight can guide the development of more targeted service contents and visual appearance so that it stands out in the competition of attention in the environments where users are overloaded by a large number information sources and stimuli. We are especially interested in understanding user attention behavior and exploring attention distribution features in online forums that support local community engagement
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