Geospatial Reasoning Ability of Business Decision Makers: Construct Definition and Measurement

Today’s organizations often gather large quantities of geographic and geo-spatially referenced data to support business decision-making. While there has been research into the significance of user characteristics on decision-performance when working with geospatial data, there is conflicting knowledge on the necessity of the geospatial reasoning ability of the decision-makers to ensure that efficient and effective decisions are made. As the amount of geographic and geospatiallyreferenced data expands, it is essential to develop a comprehensive understanding of how user characteristics, such as geospatial reasoning ability, influence decision performance. Furthermore, such an understanding is essential to the growth of knowledge within the human-computer interaction domain. This research introduces a new construct, Geospatial Reasoning Ability of Business Decision Makers, and presents a validated measurement scale to measure this construct.