Page 69 - Journal of Library Science in China 2020 Vol.46

068 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.12, 2020

The above three opinions keep pace with the practice of rural reading development, reflecting
the gradual cognitive process of the society on the problem of rural reading in the past two
decades. Early studies attributed the problem to the unbalanced allocation of reading resources
in urban and rural areas, holding that in terms of supply, the corresponding facilities, funds and
manpower in rural areas were insufficient, and the library services could not benefit the rural areas.
With the implementation of the central-branch library system of the county-level public libraries,
the building of farmers’ readings rooms and libraries and other initiatives, the rural environment
and conditions of reading have been greatly improved. However, the phenomenon of non-reading
or little reading among farmers is still widespread. Therefore, the research began to pay attention
to the management and farmers’ demands. The attribution perspective shifts from the supply side
to the demand side, from external factors to internal factors, which not only corrects the deviation,
but also lays a foundation for the establishment of a more comprehensive attribution model and
method. We believe that the analysis of current rural reading problems should not only avoid the
“basic attribution error” which ascribes the problems to the internal factors of farmers and ignores
the influence of external context, but also overcome the “observer bias” which excessively ascribes
〇a ①
them to circumstance factors such as policies, institutions and culture .
Based on this, in order to explain the reasons for the low participation of rural residents in public
reading, this paper draws on Kelly’s cube theory and tries to overcome the traditional attribution
bias to build a comprehensive attribution model. We design the main attribution dimensions of
rural residents’ low participation in public reading as person, stimulus and circumstance of public
reading. The person level includes three main factors: ability, cognition and effort. The stimulus of
public reading includes reading resources and reading activities such as books, newspapers, audio-
visual products and electronic publications, as well as the corresponding means of publicity and
communication stimulation. The circumstance of public reading mainly includes the metaphysical
values formed by the external environment and the physical practice of cultural life.

2 Survey design

2.1 Data and sample status

In order to understand the participation of rural residents in public reading comprehensively
① In the follow-up study of attribution theory, scholars found that it is often difficult for people to be completely objective and
fair in attribution. Some subjective and objective factors can cause attribution bias, mainly three kinds. The first is self-interest
attribution bias, that is, individuals attribute success to internal causes and failure to circumstance. The second is basic attribution
error, which means that we tend to attribute other people’s behavior to stable internal factors and underestimate the influence of
circumstance factors. The third is actor—observer bias, which means that actors tend to attribute success to individuals and failure
to situations, while observers tend to attribute success to situations and failure to individuals. At present, the actor-observer bias
of rural reading problems in academia is contrary to psychology. People attribute the problems more to external environmental
factors such as resources, environment, culture, policy system and supply, and less to the actors’ own factors such as reading ability,
reading willingness and demand. The reason behind this may be the long-standing practical value orientation of reading promotion
research—paying attention to issues on the supply side and making suggestions, while ignoring the research on the complex
farmers’ real needs.