Studying the User Acceptance of a Mobile Information System for Tourists in the Field

In recent years several prototypes and concepts of location-based tourist guides have been developed. Only a few of them have been evaluated by actual users. This article presents the results of a field study in which the user acceptance of two kinds of mobile information systems for tourists was evaluated by means of a questionnaire survey and interviews. The first mode (Planner) provides tourists with a personalized tour, and besides multimedia-based information at the sights, it offers navigation instructions as well. The second mode (Explorer) shows nearby sights and offers multimedia-based information that can be requested manually. The results show that mobile information systems were the most relevant information sources for tourists during their city visits. Furthermore, it is shown that the acceptance of such systems is positive and significantly influenced by the quality (accuracy) of the pedestrian navigation.