Coverage inequality and quality of volunteered geographic features in Chinese cities: Analyzing the associated local characteristics using geographically weighted regression

- Volunteered geographic information: VGI.
- Relationships between VGI coverage/quality and local characteristics are quantified.
- Relationships present great spatial non-stationarity.
- Demographic and socioeconomic factors have statistically significant influences.
- Inequity exists in VGI coverage and quality.

The volunteered geographic information (VGI) gains increasing popularity with the general public and scientific community. However, the optimism about the VGI has been tempered by two critical issues: inequality in data coverage (social justice) and data quality. It therefore requires a better understanding of the mechanism driving VGI contributions and content quality. With a case of China, this paper demonstrates one potential avenue, examining the associations between VGI coverage/quality and local demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. In particular, VGI data are harvested from the OpenStreetMap for 333 cities in China. VGI coverage is measured by the total volume of different geographic features (point, line and polygon); and VGI quality is described from two aspects: completeness and accuracy. Geographically weighted regression (GWR) shows that both demographic and socioeconomic factors have statistically significant influences on VGI coverage and quality. More specifically, densely populous cities with more young, educated and non-agricultural people enjoy higher VGI coverage and quality. Cities with lower VGI coverage and quality are primarily located in the western and southwestern regions where the ethnic minorities concentrate. High VGI coverage and quality are possibly observed in economically developed cities with high marketization degree. Besides, possibility of high VGI coverage and quality occurs in cities with more labor in scientific research and greater percentage of employers in the tertiary industry. The GWR also demonstrates that the strength and nature of the obtained relationships vary across the 333 cities. The spatial non-stationary relationships may partially answer for the controversial empirical conclusions in earlier case studies at different scales. Quantitative analysis (Gini index, Lorenz curve and Moran's I index) further evidences the great inequality in VGI coverage and quality. It can be safely inferred that the differences in engagement and use of VGI, as a new digital divide, can raise troubling concerns on the social justice implications.