# Assessing the Value of Information in an Augmented Reality City Experience
## 1 Introduction  
The rise in user participation in information production has amplified the importance of understanding the value of information in the context of varying information experiences. Prior research mostly centered around consuming information, often overlooking the experiential aspect of information production as a determinant of its value [1, 2]. Viewing information as an experiential good, recent studies have uncovered the dynamic nature of the value of information, notably, that value tends to surge after interacting with information, particularly when individuals contribute to its creation rather than solely consuming it [1, 3, 4]. While prior research focused on formal information goods [3], this study focuses on an immersive experience, specifically augmented reality for city exploration.  
Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that displays digital content over a physical environment in real time [5]. It uses monitoring properties, handheld devices, display systems, and overlay output, such as visual, audio, or haptic feedback, to seamlessly integrate digital content with user surroundings, fusing the virtual and real domains. As a rich medium, AR offers a high degree of interactivity and vividness, potentially enhancing the user's engagement with information in the context of a particular location.  
The goal of this study is to advance our understanding of how AR influences the perception and valuation of information. Specifically, this study aims to investigate how AR technology influences the perceived value of location-based information for both consumersand producers of information in city navigation. Such exploration, in turn, holds the potential to enrich the design of information products, especially in urban contexts, tourism experiences, and citizen engagement with the surroundings, where the intersection of digital information and physical spaces presents unique opportunities.  
The current study extends previous work in several ways. First, it considers a different type of content, allowing us to identify similarities or differences between the city navigation information used here and the previously investigated information types. Second, we let the participants experience an immersive AR technology compared with the previous work relating to standard tools such as text and presentation. Lastly, tasking our participants as either consumers or producers of information is a replication of prior work [3]. Yet, the replication occurs with new content, context, and technology, supporting a broader understanding of informational experiences and their practical implications.  
We developed a mobile app for city navigation inspired by the popular game Pokemon GO. The app presented location information in either standard or AR-based formats. Our research consisted of two field experiments: the first focused on user roles, comparing information consumers to information producers; the second examined the impact of different AR levels on information valuation. We employ media richness theory [6] as a theoretical lens to address the gap in how AR, as a rich media format, reshapes the valuation of information in an urban environment. These experiments allowed us to explore how both user roles and technological enhancements influence the perceived value of location-based information in urban settings.  
In the following sections, we navigate through the existing literature, exploring the relationship between information value and the AR in the context of city navigation. We then introduce the research tool and the results of two user studies. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications, and suggestions for future work in the emerging field of AR location systems.