Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
to provide the wider public with environmental information and to allow
citizens to participate in decision-making processes about problems that
influence their lives. These systems should not only be easy to use but
should be also trusted by their end users.
Two previous studies have been conducted in the context of trust in Web
GIS (Skarlatidou et al. 2010a; Skarlatidou et al. 2010b). Three problematic
aspects of these studies are that, firstly it was difficult to isolate the Web
GIS component and assess in detail the trustworthiness of specific Web
GIS elements because the non-expert participants had limited knowledge
and experience in this domain. Secondly, although studies supported the
identification of several elements which influence non-experts' trust per-
ceptions, the number of participants was too small to further draw any
definite conclusions. Thirdly, affective trust was not considered.
In an attempt to address these problems, three studies have been conducted
to further understand what influences non-experts' trust perceptions, using
a larger population sample and focusing only on the Web GIS component.
The first study, an online survey aimed to identify non-experts trust per-
ceptions about specific trustee attributes. The second study focused on
affective trust perspectives and especially the use of colour in Web GIS,
which has not been previously researched. Finally, a co-operative evalua-
tion was conducted to comparatively assess the trustee attributes in three
different Web GIS applications.
2- Background
Fogg (2003) suggests that computers' credibility matters when computer-
ised systems
“instruct or advise users, report measurements, provide
information and analysis”
(
p126
), which arguably applies to Web GIS.
The increased complexity of these interfaces and their non-expert user
base mean that investigation into the interface elements which influence
peoples' trust perceptions is necessary to improve their perceived trust-
worthiness.
Several elements should be considered in the context of online trust. A
trustor is the person willing to rely on the trustee (Web GIS) having the
confidence that the trustee will act according to his benefits (Kini and
Choobineh 1998). Context plays a significant role as it establishes risk and
uncertainty which are trust preconditions; the trustor undertakes some risk
