Toward information sharing support by agents: An experiment to unveil effects of support on information-providing activities.

It is not easy for anyone to obtain up-to-date information that meets one's needs on the street, since such information is usually fragmentary and volatile. Such environments in real cities are different from “global” network environments, like the conventional World Wide Web. Users can put information they want to share with others in any accessible location in the global networks. However, it is not possible in the environments in cities. Thus, it is necessary to provide a framework that promotes more active information sharing for the environments in cities. To realize such a framework, we propose an agent which supports information sharing by reducing risks for providing information. This study focuses on promoting the provision of information. We studied the effect of “risk elements,” which can be interpreted as negative considerations (or anxiety) of information providers. We report the results of an experiment, performed to clarify some elements that influence information-providing acts in cities. This experiment has shown that supports which reduce the risk factor can promote information-providing activities even if no other incentive such as money as a reward or reduction of costs is provided. It was also shown that multiple supports are not always more effective than a single support although each support is effective by itself. In this paper, we discuss an agent function to promote information-providing activities, based on the results of the experiment and questionnaires. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 36(11): 93–101, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (). DOI 10.1002/ scj.10658