Introduction

The emergence of digitalisation has transformed the ways entrepreneurs seek and acquire information from available digital information sources. The vast amount of digital information sources offers unprecedented opportunities to entrepreneurs and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to enhance their business performance. However, acknowledging the benefits that digital information sources provide, especially in terms of quality and accessibility, entrepreneurs should develop their literacy skills, such as information literacy (IL hereinafter). In an information-based society, IL is defined as the necessary skills and competencies to find, handle and use information and individuals are required to acquire such skills. Some authors argue that IL is the most important literacy in our contemporary society as it enables us to achieve both personal and professional goals, as well as supporting economic development (Virkus, 2011). Besides IL, social norms, ‘the influence of peers’ (Brännback et al., 2018) and types of tasks may also affect entrepreneurs’ perception of digital information sources and, in turn, their digital information sources selection (Nikou et al., 2020). Moreover, the continuous expansion of digitalisation has been associated with a substantial reduction of entry barriers for entrepreneurs, in particular, access to critical business information (Kristiansen, Furuholt and Wahid, 2003).

For example, digitalisation enables and improves entrepreneurs’ access to information through digital information sources, such as social media and web-based platforms (Guan et al., 2017; Jansen, van de Wijngaert and Pieterson, 2010; Orrensalo and Nikou, 2021a). The use of digital information sources (Ivanytska et al., 2021), reduces the cost of infrastructure, time constraints and human labour (Dinet, 2014). Information acquired from digital sources allows entrepreneurs to reach relevant, accurate and timely information for their business needs (Chatterjee, Dutta Gupta and Upadhyay, 2020), which leads to an increase in entrepreneurs’ understanding of the market environments that support their activities, decision-making process and the business growth and outcome (Sahut, Iandoli and Teulon, 2021). Although literature has shown the benefits of digital information sources for entrepreneurial activities to compete in high pressure and dynamic environments (Sahut, Iandoli and Teulon, 2021), current research does not present a comprehensive conceptual model that examines the entrepreneurs’ digital information sources selection. The selection of digital information sources may not happen in isolation but requires the identification of factors influencing such behaviour (for example, Zaremohzzabieh et al., 2016).