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General Acceptance of New Digital Media

Using the latest computer techniques does not necessarily guarantee its acceptance and a citizen friendly presentation, for example, older people are often not familiar with computers. It was therefore considered necessary to undertake a study to investigate the acceptability of the GIS presentation described earlier (WEIDENBACH 1997). The Landscape Master Plan, mentioned earlier, and a comparable GIS project of the Nature Park Upper Danube Valley were presented to five study groups. After the GIS demonstration the respondents were asked to fill out a questionnaire and to discuss their impressions and feelings within the group. The group exploration and the questionnaires handled issues concerning the suitability of GIS presentations, the professional significance of GIS and the willingness to use GIS applications on the Internet. The test groups were:

2 groups (14 and 44 persons) of professional experts in environmental and landscape planning (officials and self-employed planners)
14 citizens and members of the community council of a village in Upper Bavaria
32 participants of a GIS symposium (scientists, officials and self-employed planners and students)
30 students (Geography, Biology, Forestry) from an excursion in the Nature Park Upper Danube Valley

The students, the citizens and one of the expert groups were familiar with the data, since the GIS presentation for these groups took place in the project areas of the rural community in Bavaria and the Nature Park Upper Danube Valley. A preliminary analysis of the collected data, shows that, in general, there is a significant acceptance of the digital presentation (see Fig. 8). The groups in Beuron and Burggen ,being laymen in terms of GIS, are more critical than people who have a certain GIS experience. Although the citizens group regarded the digital demonstration as a transparent medium, most of them wish to retain the use of analogue paper maps.

Fig. 8: The suitability of GIS presentations Click on the Image to make it big!

The potential use of the Internet to obtain spatial landscape information is still very unpopular among people who do not work professionally with spatial data or who are not familiar with the WWW. In spite of the present popularity of the Internet, using the WWW in Germany is primarily still something for the insider. One of the reasons is probably that there are still only a few Internet services, such as home banking, from which the man in the street can benefit. The rising number of recently installed Community Networks (Bürgernetze) in Germany, with interesting official services and offers, shows a new tendency to use the WWW pertinently.