Geoscience Reference
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(GIS) (Dunn 2007). Prior to this, mainly experts used GIS, but the Web
has facilitated wider access to spatial information and allowed non-experts
to view, use, access and build maps using Web GIS technology (Skarlatidou
2010). Haklay and Zafiri (2008) note that since the 1990s the number of
people that use a GIS in their daily routines has increased and Unwin
(2005) uses the term
“accidental geographers”
to refer to these non-
experts GIS users who have no GIS knowledge or expertise.
Although the first research paper dealing with Human Computer Inter-
action (HCI) issues in the GIS field was published in 1963 (Haklay and
Skarlatidou 2010), it was mainly the development of Web GIS, Collaborative
GIS and Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) applications that created the
need to incorporate HCI issues, such as usability, within the GIS field.
Recent studies in the area of Web GIS, amongst others, demonstrate the
usability deficiencies of non-expert user interaction (e.g. Skarlatidou and
Haklay 2006; Nivala et al. 2008), the importance of Usability Engineering
(UE) (e.g. Haklay and Tobón 2003), the significance of a User-Centred
Design approach for the identification of non-experts' needs and expecta-
tions (e.g. Kramers 2008), and that the physical environment, the techno-
logical, social and user contexts should be all taken into consideration in
Web GIS design (Skarlatidou 2010).
The complexity of Web GIS interfaces and the limited knowledge of non-
experts in spatial data handling and GIS operations create additional HCI
implications (e.g. concerns about the perceived trustworthiness of these
systems). Trust influences human-computer interactions, as people relate
to computers in similar ways to other human collaborators (Fogg 2003). In
the online context trust was defined as a trustor's (person's) willingness to
rely on a trustee, which can be an online system or online information
(Chopra and Wallace, 2003). Online trust has been researched from an
HCI perspective, particularly for e-commerce and existing studies suggest
that a trust-oriented interface design focusing on elements which influence
the users' trust perceptions (i.e. logos, colours) can improve the systems'
trustworthiness.
While the trust literature demonstrates that people engage more with
systems that they perceive as trustworthy and avoid those they mistrust
(Sillence et al. 2006), there is limited knowledge about what influences
non-experts' trust perceptions when they interact with Web GIS. There are
several Web GIS applications that incorporate the elements of risk and
uncertainty that influence the user's willingness to rely on the system. For
example, in the environmental PPGIS domain, Web GIS are commonly used
