Revisiting Human Information Foraging: Adaptations for LLM-based Chatbots

Abstract: Information Foraging Theory's (IFT) framing of human information seeking choices as decision-theoretic cost-value judgments has successfully explained how people seek information among linked patches of information (e.g., linked webpages). However, the theory has to be adopted and validated in non-patchy LLM-based chatbot environments, before its postulates can be reliably applied to the design of such chat-based information seeking environments. This paper is a thought experiment that applies the IFT cost-value proposition to LLM-based chatbots and presents a set of preliminary hypotheses to guide future theory-building efforts for how people seek information in such environments.