Presenting Geographic Information: Effects of Data Aggregation, Dispersion, and Users' Spatial Orientation

摘要

Geographic information systems (GIS) have taken on an increasingly important role supporting decision making in many organizations. GIS have been used to support a breadth of tasks including oil and mineral exploration, facility location, logistics sup- port, and facilities management decisions. The effectiveness of GIS as a decision sup- port tool comes primarily from the visual display of data in the form of maps. When presenting information as a geographic map, the level of data aggregation potentially affects aspects of task complexity such as information load and the potential for pattem recognition by the user. Other task attributes expected to be related to data aggregation effects include problem size, the degree of data dispersion, and users' spatal orientation skills. We conducted an experiment to study these effects and their interactions. Subjects used a GIS including map-based information charaterized by different levels of prob- lem size, data dispersion, and data aggregation. Spatial orientation skill was examined as a covariate in the experimental treatthents. The results indicate that all of these geo- graphic information characteristics have significant impacts on decision performance. Moreover, many interactions are present among the factors. We evaluate these interac- tions in order to derive implications for practice and for future research.