| The acquisition and use of data and information in information systems, particularly geographic information systems (GIS), can be costly in terms of time, money, and intellectual capital expended. In 1738, Bernoulli wrote of the importance of considering utility over price in determining a good's value. In the geospatial information field, it is customary to evaluate data quality and data accuracy; however, till now little attention has been paid to systematic utility assessments of geospatial data and information ingested into or outputted from GIS. A geospatial information utility assessment methodology is needed for two reasons: to improve the efficiency of GIS resources applied to geospatial data acquisition activities and to increase the effectiveness of GIS users by providing them a method for measuring the utility of their GIS-based analyses. There is a plethora of literature on data or information quality, and on generalized models for utility. Contrasted by the dearth of literature on information utility, this exploratory research develops a validated survey instrument that uncovers users' perceptions of the factors that make up the utility of information used in GIS. In the utility literature, abstract definitions of utility abound, as do methods (functions) for using utility; however, the components or factors of utility are not addressed. This research treats utility as a second-order construct. A research model that defines geospatial information utility in terms of quality (i.e., attribute 'goodness') and context (i.e., attributes in use) factors is presented. The research is conducted via a pilot study and a main study to validate the model and to refine the instrument. The data provide the correlations of the named quality and context factors. |
