Planning Support Systems and Task-Technology Fit: a Comparative Case Study

Abstract

Studies in the Planning Support Systems (PSS) debate are increasingly paying attention to the support function of PSS. This involves among other things studying the usefulness of PSS to practitioners. This paper adds another dimension to this evolving debate by arguing that planning tasks should receive more attention. Although planning tasks are central in several PSS definitions, they have hardly received explicit attention in empirical studies. In an aim to fill this void we conducted an empirical study based on the perspective of tasktechnology fit. The latter consists of a combination ('fit') of analytical and communicative support capabilities ('technologies'), and three types of planning tasks: exploration, selection and negotiation. Next, we selected four case studies in the Netherlands, in which the same PSS was applied, which consists of a combination of the CommunityViz software and a touch-enabled MapTable. The cases differed in the planning tasks that were central during the workshop, resulting in different kinds of usefulness attributed to the PSS. For instance, in one case with a selection task the communicative support capabilities contributed to the transparency of the process, whereas in another the analytic support capabilities of the PSS improved the task of negotiation because of the iterative feedback it provided. The paper concludes with the observation that the concept of task-technology fit has potential be applied in different contexts and with different types of PSS.

A Scoping Review of the Application of the Task-Technology Fit Theory

“…Measurements [6,9,15] Model [3,17,[22][23][24][25] Summarize [8] Test [26,27] Assess Phenomena Antecedents [5,13,[28][29][30][31] Effects Impact/Benefit [32,33,42,[34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] (Intention to) Use [4,12,16,[43][44][45][46][47] The two high level categories were used to determine the trends in the type of studies published over time. The cumulative number of studies published for the two highest-level categories was calculated over time and depicted in Fig.…”

Conception and use of an individual-based model of residential choice in a planning decision process. Feedback from an experimental trial in the city of Besançon, France

“…Firstly, its usefulness for exploring specific land use development strategies through considering both residential choice and satisfaction, and secondly its usefulness as a medium for knowledge sharing between researchers and planners and providing a structured environment for these exchanges. As underlined by Peltzer, Arciniegas, Geertman, and Lenferink (2015), assessing the usefulness of a planning support system depends on whether its application leads to an improvement (i.e. an added value) in comparison to a situation without it.…”

Towards a pragmatic research agenda for the PSS domain

“…Recently, several researchers have been testing claims about the added value of PSS for strategy-making and with some significant progress (see Goodspeed, 2016Goodspeed, , 2013Pelzer, 2015). In my own research I first focused on testing the effectiveness of participative design mechanisms.…”

“…A follow-up study was designed to test hypotheses about PSS usability and their expected added value for multi-actor strategy-making. One project focused on context-rich observations in workshops (Pelzer et al, 2014(Pelzer et al, , 2015Pelzer and Geertman, 2013). In close relation, a control-rich experimental research environment was setup to test the added value of PSS under controlled conditions.…”