Proceedings of the Seventh International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media

Local Knowledge Matters for Crowdsourcing Systems:
Experience from Transferring an American Site to China
Fernando Torre1 , Yanjie Liu1 , Zhengjie Liu2 , Loren Terveen11GroupLens Research, Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA{torre,yanjie,terveen}@cs.umn.edu
2Sino-European Usability Center, Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, Chinaliuzhj@dlmu.edu.cn
Abstract

applications? In order to explore these questions further, we
took Cyclopath, a geowiki for cyclists in the Twin Cities andcreated a Chinese version for cyclists in Dalian.

We present the results of a preliminary cross-cultural
study of Cyclopath, a geographic crowdsourcing system for cyclists. We created a Chinese version andtested it in lab with 40 cyclists in Dalian, China. We
analyzed the data entered by users and found some significant differences compared to similar studies done in
the US; this illustrates the need for local knowledge incrowdsourcing applications. From usage patterns andinterview data, we observed that landmarks play a largerrole for navigating the map and requesting routes; thissuggests that integrating landmarks better into the Cyclopath UI could improve Chinese users’ experience
with the system. Finally, we found that concepts ofauthority and hierarchy may influence Chinese users’
trust of peer-contributed content; this suggests that reputation mechanisms may help improve trust.

Cyclopath
Cyclopath1 is an editable map that provides route-finding
services for cylists. Users can edit road segments (blocks)
and places of interest (points). They can also add tags andnotes to both blocks and points. Additionally, users can rate
the bikeability of blocks. These ratings are used by the routefinder to compute bike-friendly routes. Users can further
personalize their routes by specifying preferences for different tags. Furthermore, since Cyclopath is a wiki, users canmonitor and revert any changes to the system.

Twin Cities
The relatively flat Twin Cities metropolitan area covers
about 8,000 km2 and has a population of about 3.3 million
people. Even though the winters are cold and cycling numbers drop during those months, it is still considered one of
the most bike-friendly areas in the US 2 .

Introduction
Picture Peter, a fictional cyclist in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, USA, giving instructions to his friend on how tobike to where they will meet for dinner. He gives directions
such as “head south on Hennepin Ave” and “turn left at 12thstreet”. He assures him that even though it is downtown,
there are bike lanes to make his trip safer. He gives him thename of the restaurant and informs him of a bike rack justone block away from the restaurant where he can lock his
bike.
Now picture Peng, a fictional cyclist in Dalian, China.
Peng finds himself in a similar situation to Peter. He gives
his friend directions such as “take Zhongshan Road towards
Xinghai Park” and “turn right after Dongcai University”. Hereminds his friend to be careful of the hectic traffic and to beaware of the big hill near Dongcai University. The restaurant is a little hard to find, so they plan to meet at a nearby,
recognizable park and walk together from there.
Cycling is one of the most common forms of exercise,recreation, and transport around the world. Yet the geographic, structural, and cultural characteristics of a location
can significantly impact the cycling experience. So how dothese differences in turn affect geographic crowdsourcing
applications? What is their impact on the success of such

DalianLocated in the northeast of China, Dalian is a mountainous
region covering an area of about 13,000 km2 and with a population of almost 6.2 million people (3.6 million in urban areas). Although not as cold, it also experiences seasonal temperature differences that affect the cycling experience. Its
infrastructure was changed in favor of cars, moving cyclists
to the pedestrian space, making it a not very bike-friendly
city. Dalian’s different culture, geography, and infrastructure and its similar area, population, and seasonal changes
make it an ideal city to compare with the Twin Cities.

Research Questions
RQ1. Contributed Content. What type of content willusers in Dalian contribute and how is it different from thecontent contributed by users in the Twin Cities? This will
help us better understand the cultural, geographic, and infrastructure differences between the two cities.
1

http://cyclopath.org
http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured-stories/1-bike-cityminneapolis2

Copyright c 2013, Association for the Advancement of Artificial
Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved.

729

ing the system, anonymous use of the system, and trust of
information contributed by others.
We recruited participants with the help of local bike clubs.
Subjects were 18 or older and had cycled at least three hours
or 20km during the year preceding the study. Participants
were compensated in cash for their time.
Half of the 40 subjects were students. 36 subjects weremen and 4 were women. 12 subjects had more than 5 yearsof experience cycling in Dalian. When asked about why theycycled, 38 said they did so for recreation purposes, 22 said
they cycled for training, and 16 selected commuting as oneof their reasons.

RQ1. Contributed Content
Subjects in our study entered a total of 168 points, 98 tags on
blocks, 81 tags on points, 83 notes on blocks, and 78 noteson points. We manually coded this data and compared it to
the results of previous US studies (Priedhorsky and Terveen
2008; Torre and others 2010). The following were the key
factors we found that affected the types of data contributed:
Geography. Given that Dalian is a mountainous region,
as opposed to the generally flat Twin Cities, many morenotes on blocks were descriptions about slope (22.5% of all
block notes). Additionally, 18.1% of all notes on blocks related to scenery. This is in part due to Dalian’s many mountain and sea views. For many of our subjects, whose primary
purpose for cycling was recreation, thinking about whichroutes would be most enjoyable often led them to think about
geographical features and sceneries.
Culture. As an example, Dalian subjects did not enter
points related to arts (compared to 10.9% for US users).
This may be in part because of a noticeable subculture in
the US of people who value both arts and eco-friendly activities such as cycling. However, it was not uncommon to findpoints related to culturally popular places such as Karaoke
venues.
Landmarks. What serves as useful landmarks in Dalianis different than in the US. For example, Dalian users entered
fewer points related to food (16.8% vs. 36.4%). Restaurants
in Dalian tend to be numerous, but with similar offerings andsmall in size. This makes it harder to remember restaurant
names and makes them less useful as landmarks. In contrast, subjects entered more community resources (43.1% vs.
17.1%), such as hospitals and schools, presumably because
they served as useful landmarks.
Cycling infrastructure. While the amount of cyclingrelated data entered by users was similar to the US studies,
the type of content was often different, reflecting the different cycling infrastructures of both cities. For example,
there were no mentions of bike lanes in Dalian, even thoughthat is one of the most popular tags in the US system. Bikeracks, which accounted for 12.7% of all notes on points inthe previous US study, also went unmentioned in Dalian.
Bike racks are harder to come by in Dalian, so cyclists might
be used to other alternatives for securing their bicycles.

Figure 1: Chinese version of Cyclopath UI
RQ2. Usage Patterns. Are there any differences in usage patterns, such as when browsing the map or requesting routes? Significant differences when interacting with thesystem could suggest design changes that need to be madeto better support Chinese users.
RQ3. Authority and Trust. Is there any evidence of therole of authority in the system and how it affects trust? The
hierarchical and collectivistic nature of Chinese culture may
affect users’ trust of peer-produced content and may lead to adesire for greater authority, crucial issues for crowdsourcing
applications.

Methods
To prepare Cyclopath for Dalian, we translated over 800 English phrases in the Cyclopath UI and populated the road
network with map data imported from Open Street Map.
Given that this was an experimental study, some features
such as elevation data and aerial images, were not included.
Figure 1 shows a screenshot of the final interface.
We conducted user studies of about one hour with 40 cyclists in Dalian. The studies were conducted in Chinese bya Chinese member of the research team while an American
researcher watched from a separate observation room.
User studies consisted of a set of interview questions andtasks. We began with some ice-breaker questions about arecent cycling trip, followed by questions related to riding
behavior, their involvement in the local cycling community,
and their experiences with online communities.
This set of initial interview questions was followed by thetasks portion of the study, where we asked subjects to: 1)
enter 4 points on the map, 2) request a route of their choice,3) enter 4 tags and 4 notes for blocks and/or points, and 4)
rate the bikeability of at least 10 blocks, on a 5-point scaleranging from Impassable to Excellent. All data entered wasmade visible to subsequent participants.
After completing these tasks, users were asked a set ofquestions about their experience with Cyclopath, motivations to use the system, potential benefits gained from us-

Discussion We found that users in Dalian have a significant amount of cycling-related knowledge to contribute. But
there were many cases where the type of data contributed730

was quite different from that in the US. For example, marking bike racks was not as important for cyclists as specifying
properties of road and trail segments like slope and scenery.
These differences highlight the utility of crowdsourcing systems such as Cyclopath, where local knowledge is leveraged
to provide users with information and insights that are relevant to them. Attempting to control or limit the type of information that users can contribute could hinder the captureof knowledge concerning geography, culture, and infrastructure required to meet user needs.

The use of landmarks in Dalian has important design implications for Cyclopath. First, cyclists use landmarks to orient their exploration of the map; however, in the current UI,
when the map is zoomed out, main roads, bodies of water,and green spaces are shown – but no landmarks. Therefore,
modifying the display to make some landmarks always visible, especially when zoomed out, would be useful. Second,landmarks should be used when showing computed routes,
both displayed as part of the route visualization on the map
and included in step-by-step text instructions, e.g., “Turnright after Xinghai Square”.

RQ2. Usage Patterns
RQ3. Authority and Trust

As we conducted our studies, we observed an interesting
pattern in the users’ interactions with Cyclopath and answers
to interview questions: landmarks played a major role fornavigation and route finding.
One of the first signs of these patterns was that when
asked to add points of interest, most users would go for thesame well-known landmarks. Afterwards, they would tend
to add new points around that landmark. Users expressed
the importance of landmarks for finding (or adding) othernearby landmarks:

Researchers have often studied the cultural differences between how Chinese and Americans use collaborative systems. Culturally-influenced views regarding areas such as
authority can greatly influence user experience of a system(Liao and others 2010).
Hofstede’s culture model, which categorized cultures
based on five dimensions (Hofstede 2001), is frequently
used to help explain cross-cultural differences. The dimensions Individualism and Power Distance seem particularly
relevant to the subject of authority and trust in an open content system like Cyclopath. Individualism refers to the degree to which a culture emphasizes an individual’s relianceon the self. Collectivistic cultures such as China might bemore motivated to contribute to crowdsourcing applications
for the benefit of the community (or by social pressure), but
may also avoid contributing for fear of disrupting the harmony of the group. Power distance refers to the extent towhich less powerful people in a society accept inequalityof power and consider it normal. Users from hierarchicalsocieties might have different expectations of the role of authority in such systems.
Given the traditional respect for authority and hierarchyin Chinese culture, we were interested in seeing how this affects users’ trust within Cyclopath. Because more extensive
and real-world usage of the system is required to truly diveinto these issues, a direct comparison with the US site was
not possible. Therefore, we focused on finding preliminary
evidence of these factors during our interviews.
When thinking about online trust in this paper, we do not
focus on how our site affects users’ perception of trustworthiness about the site, but on how our system supports trustworthy behavior (Riegelsberger and others 2005). We areinterested in knowing if users are willing to consume information contributed by other users. As in all situations where
trust is required, there is a certain risk and uncertainty involved when doing so.
When asked whether they trusted content contributed byother users, only about a third of users (32.5%) in our study
did. If we look only at subjects who were students, this increases to 45%, suggesting that there might be a higher tendency to trust contributed content among students, who are
generally younger and more exposed to online content.

“There are no landmarks. I have to zoom in enough to
see the small characters on the points. But in Baidu Map,
I can see the name on those landmarks even when it is in
low zoom level. For example, if I want to add a point near
Dalian Maritime University (DLMU), I’m used to finding
DLMU first.”“If there is no other point around the point I want to add,
it will be a little difficult for me. Because sometimes I
can’t remember the name of the blocks but can remember
the bus stop signs near it and some landmarks.”
The second sign was the low use of addresses for requesting routes. Most users didn’t know the addresses of their
desired destinations and so preferred to route to nearby recognizable landmarks. In order to better facilitate this, we
actually switched the order of the tasks so that users could
add points first, whereas the original script had users asking
for routes first. Users expressed to us the utility of landmarks
when getting directions and finding new routes:“Adding points is important. The map is currently notvery full of points. When I go out if I can’t find landmarks
I can’t find my way.”“If I want to ride on a brand new route, I will check themap to find some landmarks before I start off.”
Discussion Navigation patterns have been found to varyfrom location to location depending on the cultural, geographic, and infrastructural properties of the place. These
patterns can even vary within the same country (Li and
Zhang 2009). Dalian cyclists’ use of landmarks is evidence of infrastructural and geographic differences between
Dalian and the Twin Cities. The smaller amount of gridlike road networks in Dalian, which is often a result of roads
going along mountains, rivers, and similar large obstacles,
results in a need for more navigation aids.

Authority Trustworthy behavior can be incentivized by
the existence of authorities who supervise contributions andsanction behaviors that decrease trust. Comments from731

a number of subjects touched on the theme of authority,
specifically through a desire for content contributed by professionals and for administrators to play a role.
“ I’m worried about the limits of authority. An administrator should supervise the changes made by users.”“Just like forums, the system can provide some credits tomotivate the users to post more content.”

Conclusion
Result No.1 Even when the goal is similar (get cycling
routes), the data entered and considered useful in geographic
applications can vary by location.
Implication: This gives us insight into what is important
to locals and reminds us of the importance of local knowledge for crowdsourcing applications and the dangers of limiting contributions too much.

“I hope to have content written by both official organizations and the users.”
Reputation Another mechanism that can motivate trustworthy behavior is reputation. As explained by Riegelsberger, reputation mechanisms require stable identities andthe traceability of actions. Stable identities are supported in
Cyclopath through usernames (although users are not forced
to log in in order to contribute). Because Cyclopath is awiki, all past contributions of any user can also be traced.
Although not an explicit reputation measure, users’ work
histories serve as reputation builders and evidence of past,
trustworthy contributions.
Given that it is harder to establish reputation for anonymous users, we asked participants whether they trusted content contributed by anonymous users. Half of the users
said they would trust content contributed by logged-in users
more, but the reasons for this varied:
Experience. Some users correlated logging in with experience. To them users who have used the system for a longtime will naturally decide to log in.
“I trust logged-in users better because they have used thesystem longer.”
Accountability. Some users felt that logging in gave
users a sense of responsibility for their edits that anonymous
users didn’t have.
“I believe logged-in users more, because they can have asense of responsibility ”
Community. Anonymous usage affects the sense of community among users, something very important in a collectivistic country such as China.
“I trust logged-in users more than anonymous users...
When you conmmunicate with a logged-in user, it is like
you are communicating with a person. But when you communicate with an anonymous user, it feels like you arecommunicating with a computer.”

Result No.2 Landmarks play an important role for users
in Dalian when browsing or navigating. Cyclopath should
support this by making certain landmarks more visible on
the main map and including landmarks in route directions.
Implication: Information that is more important to a specific group of users should be made more salient.
Result No.3 Given that authority and hierarchy play animportant role in Chinese culture, it was not surprising tofind evidence of this in user reactions to Cyclopath. We
should therefore consider implementing site features suchas points and ranks that could help users establish reputationand trust.
Implication: When designing for different cultures, theimportance of privacy and trust must be taken into account.
This can affect whether the system requires users to log in,encourages them to do so or avoids it altogether. It can also
lead to differences regarding how transparent to make user
history and contributions in crowdsourcing systems.

Acknowledgements
We thank the members of the Cyclopath team and the SinoEuropean Usability Center at Dalian Maritime University.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1209673 andby SAFEA funds from the Chinese government.

References
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Discussion So how can we motivate users to build trust?
First, we need to help users trust peer-contributed content,
especially by anonymous users. Second, we need to motivate users to log in so that their contributions are trusted
more.
Techniques such as feedback, points, and ranks are goodways to not only motivate users to log in and use the system, but also increase other users’ trust. Making user rank
and experience more transparent helps support the Chinese
views on hierarchy and thereby improve trust. Users werealready thinking about these potential solutions during ourinterviews:“I hope to have a function to rate on other user’s comments, just like on Taobao. We usually trust the seller
who has a high prestige.”732