# Assessing the Value of Information in an Augmented Reality City Experience
## 5 Discussion  
We study the value of information within the context of augmented reality (AR), with a specific focus on consumers and producers. The study involves the design and development of a research tool called Tour It Yourself (TY), with AR technology, to facilitate content consumption and production around local points of interest. This study consists of two field experiments. The findings offer several key insights into the dynamics of perceived information value in AR from both consumers and producers' perspective. The first hypothesis (H1) was confirmed. Adopting the role of producers is associated with a higher perceived value of information than participating in the consumer role. In other words, a nuanced relationship exists between participation experience and value perception, shedding light on the impact of users' roles on information appreciation. This aligns with previous research on the so-called \"IKEA effect\" [37], where individuals place higher value on products they create themselves. The second hypothesis (H2) was also supported, suggesting that AR technology increases the perceived value of information for producers. This finding extends our understanding of media richness theory [6] in the context of AR. According to findings, AR not only enriches the medium through which information is presented but also enhances how that information is perceived and valued by users. This insight may have important implications for the design of information systems, particularly in contexts where user engagement and information value are crucial, such as education, tourism, and location-based services. While AR's media richness is suggested as a factor enhancing perceived value, the specific design elements that best achieve this without causing cognitive overload remain unexplored in our research. Future study may look for the optimal design for maximizing media richness, and investigate how different combinations of AR features (e.g., interactivity, personalization, etc.) can be optimized for varying contexts of use [26; 28]. The third hypothesis (H3) yielded unexpected results. Contrary to our hypothesis, WTA decreased after using the information. This may be explained by the practical, even physical, challenges participants faced during the experiment, such as navigating urban environments in warm weather conditions, combined with the cognitive load of interacting with AR objects and processing information. Thus, the effort required to access and use the information may have outweighed its perceived benefits, which resulted in lower value post-experience. This result highlights the importance of conducting field experiments in real-world conditions, as they can reveal practical challenges that may not be apparent in controlled laboratory settings. It also suggests that the relationship between AR experiences and information valuation call for further research as it seems to be more complex than initially theorized, potentially involving a balance between the richness of the AR experience and the physical and cognitive demands placed on the user. The relationship between AR-induced cognitive load and its impact on users' perceived value needs further investigation. Future research should take a more nuanced look at these relationships and AR developers \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Experience Type** & **N** & **Mean Grade** & **SD Grade** \\ \hline Without AR & 27 & 3.70 & 3.85 \\ With AR & 24 & 4.44 & 2.34 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 7: Descriptive statistics of grade after the experiment. should consider these factors to create more user-friendly experiences even in challenging physical environments. Our fourth hypothesis (H4) was confirmed, showing that AR technology does not significantly alter the gap between Willingness to Accept (WTA) and Willingness to Pay (WTP) for information products. The existing literature has established that WTA is typically greater than WTP for various goods and services.