Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
1.
What Web GIS trustee attributes influence non-experts' trust percep-
tions?
2.
How do colours influence non-experts' trust perceptions for Web GIS?
3.
Can the users recognise and assess the trustee attributes in different
Web GIS environments and how their trust perceptions and satisfac-
tion levels are influenced?
3.1 Study 1: Online Survey
In our previous studies (Skarlatidou et al. 2010a; 2010b), we found that
important Web GIS trustee attributes, which influence trust, are the:
legend, colours, logos, map size, scales and map tutorials. It should be noted
that all participants in our previous experiments mentioned in Section 1.2,
linked trust to these elements and this is evident from think aloud and post-
test questionnaire data. For this study, an online survey was conducted
to investigate whether these trustee attributes are important for a wider
population sample of non-experts. Participants were required to have no
previous GIS education. Links to the survey were provided through social
networking websites. Respondents were informed that the data will remain
confidential; in order to encourage participation no questions about the age
and the gender of participants were included.
The survey started with general questions about prior experience with GIS
applications. Participants were asked if they have ever used paper and
online maps and if they trust them and to describe their trust concerns and
the elements they look for before trusting an online map. Likert scale items
(1: Strongly Disagree to 5: Strongly Agree) focused then on the specific
trustee attributes under investigation (
Table 1.1
). Duplicates and negative
wording were used to ensure that respondents pay attention to the ques-
tions and minimise any bias introduced by the questions. Table 1 lists the
items in order of how many people agreed with the statement, with the
negatives and duplicates being removed.
