Measuring the impact of location-awareness in the acceptance of mobile systems

Abstract

In this paper we propose a methodology to determine the impact on adoption of location-aware information. In a National Park setting digital information is already being served to its visitors. We evaluated if enhancing the information with location awareness has an impact on its acceptance. We tested two identical applications that aim to inform visitors to Nature areas: being one a simple informative digital tool, while the other is enhanced by location interactivity (it uses the position of the visitor to automatically deliver information). We modelled the future usage of the systems using the Technology Acceptance Model, an established model from the Information Systems literature. The results show that making a system location-aware produces a significant positive impact in the acceptance of the system and validates novel approaches to the measurement and comparison of mobile systems by quantifying the relative impact of location-awareness. This work also proposes a model to explain the usage of information in Natural Areas.