Relationality in Geo-Information value. Price as product of socio-technical networks

Already for more than a decade there has been a discussion on how to define prices of geo-information. We pose that rather than focusing this discussion on the geo-information itself, it is important to consider the contextual conditions which contribute to price establishment and their acceptance by involved individuals and organizations. As geo-information is usually embedded into inter-organizational relations (IORs), the geo-information use is affected by the ‘relationality’ of the internal and the external context in which the organizations operate. Both these influences justify using infrastructural aspects as conceptual lenses to examine when prices are established and when they are consolidated. We explored these infrastructural aspects in three cases of IORs in the Netherlands. The cases show that the dynamics across IORs can reveal relevant aspects of price development and price setting of geo-information. We conclude therefore that the IORs act as anchoring mechanism for prices.