Page 84 - Journal of Library Science in China 2020 Vol.46

CHEN Geng & HU Yachun / The attribution analysis of low participation in public reading 083
among rural residents: A survey from 77 administrative villages and rural libraries in Hubei Province

In order to verify these attribution results, we took village D in Zhengdian Street, Wuhan as an
example to make a brief explanation . In the 30 samples in the village, they were faced with the
〇a ①
same stimulus and circumstance. Among them, 10 villagers knew about the village’s farmers’
reading room, 6 had been there in 2018, 4 had never been, and the other 20 villagers did not
know its existence. Among the 10 people who knew about the farmers’ reading room, 6 residents
participated in this year’s public reading while the other 4 did not. Among the 4 who did not
participate, two of them did not read much because they were too busy and did not have the habit
of reading, which was attributed to person. One resident had the reading habit, but was quite
busy and chose electronic reading methods such as mobile phones, which was attributed to the
combination of person and stimulus. Another villager had no preference for reading and no reading
habit, which was attributed to person. Among the 20 rural residents who did not know about the
farmers’ reading room, not knowing suggested that they had not participated in it before, so it
could be attributed to four dimensions: stimulus and circumstance, person and stimulus, person
and stimulus as well as person . When asked why they did not go to the farmers’ reading room,
all the residents chose not knowing as the first reason. According to the self-interested attribution
bias, most people usually attribute the failure to external factors when making self-attribution.
Therefore, not knowing the reading room can be regarded as a necessary condition for their non-
participation, but not a sufficient condition. Therefore, we focused on the effects of other causes.
According to the data, 13 residents did not participate because of single or multiple reasons such
as the lack of reading habits or time and illiteracy, which belonged to the attribution of person.
Two residents had reading habits, but they did not participate in reading because they did not know
about the farmers’ reading room and chose electronic reading such as mobile phone or computer,
which is a composite attribution of stimulus and circumstance. One resident did not participate
because he was too busy and had no reading habit, and he also felt that the farmers’ reading
room was too far away, which belonged to the composite attribution of person and stimulus. Two
residents had reading habits, but they did not participate because they did not know about the
farmers’ reading room, which was attributed to stimulus. The other two residents were unclear
about the attribution of their non-involvement.
It is found that although not all the eight attribution results can be verified, most of them can
be confirmed from the case of village D. That is, the low participation of rural residents in public
reading may be a single person or stimulus attribution, and the composite attribution of person
and stimulus, person and circumstance, as well as the combination of person, stimulus and
circumstance. Therefore, it indicates that the reasons for rural residents’ low participation in public

① In order to control the variables and obtain the corresponding information, Kelly, MacArthur and others verified the three-
dimensional attribution by experimenting with small samples. However, the circumstance, the construction or publicity of the
farmers’ reading rooms in 77 administrative villages in 17 cities and prefectures of Hubei province involved in this investigation
were different. Taking all the 2021 samples and 77 farmers’ reading rooms as a whole, it is difficult to meet the requirements of
Kelly’s variance analysis attribution model for information collection and experimental environment. At the same time, because part
of the information is incomplete, we only do a simple statistical analysis.