ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: Searching for geographic information within national information infrastructures and acquiring this information involves transaction costs. This cost includes searching for information, measuring what has been exchanged, enforcing agreements, and protecting the rights to use and distribute. The transaction cost is often transferred to the buyer. It can prevent the trade/ exchange if it is perceived too high by the buyer. The research presented in this article is based on the experiments done in Sweden and Germany. It is the first attempt to quantify the transaction costs related to the trade of geographic datasets in selected countries. The experiments are based on identified measurement categories for the selected datasets. We conclude the paper with our first results, open research questions and directions for further research.
