Effectiveness of Rectangular Cartogram for Conveying Quantitative Information: An Eye Tracking-Based Evaluation

Abstract

A rectangular cartogram is a kind of graphical representation that uses a rectangular area to represent the attributes of geographical objects and is widely used in the representation of statistical data such as population, economic statistics, and epidemic distribution. However, there is currently little research on the effectiveness of rectangular cartograms for conveying quantitative data. In this paper, the rectangular cartogram and unclassed choropleth map are compared to evaluate the rectangular cartogram’s effectiveness in quantity representation through task-driven eye-tracking cognitive experiments. In addition, the accuracy and efficiency of information communication and the differences in the reading processes of map readers when using the two types of maps for different tasks have been analyzed to provide references for more effective use of rectangular cartograms in the future. The main contributions of this paper are: (1) it has been proven by experiments that when completing the four tasks of locate, compare, find extreme, and estimate, the participants have higher accuracy rates with the rectangular cartogram; (2) the reading process shown by the eye tracking experiment shows that the more complex the task is, the more patient the participants would be with the rectangular cartogram, and the more pronounced the advantages of the rectangular cartogram are.