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Conceptual Vagueness in Human and LLM Representations: Evidence from Migration Distance Categorization (Short Paper)

Authors Songlin Wang , Krzysztof Janowicz , Ailin Benitez Cortes , Marion Borderon , Yingjing Huang , Mina Karimi , Zilong Liu , Annika Süß , Patrick Sakdapolrak

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Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Information systems → Geographic information systems
  • Theory of computation → Categorical semantics
Keywords
  • qualitative categories
  • conceptual vagueness
  • human migration
  • large language models
  • agreement

Metrics

Abstract

Conceptual vagueness is a fundamental characteristic of many geographic categories. The varied definitions of "long-distance" and "short-distance" in migration studies provides a typical example. Although interpretations of these categories are inherently context-dependent and heterogeneous, they remain widely used in domain research. This study investigates the extent to which different individuals reach a consensus on conceptualizing these categories. With a migration related corpus where "long" and "short" are generally not explicitly mentioned, we elicit human and LLM judgments in classifying each article into these two categories. Both human-human and human-LLM agreements are quantified. Our results show that human agreements are only moderate, confirming substantial conceptual variability among informed readers. LLM outputs exhibit a comparable level of variability, failing to converge on a stable category boundary. This disagreement arises from multiple sources, from detection of implicit signals to their interpretations. These findings demonstrate the feasibility of using LLMs as probes to characterize conceptual vagueness in geography at scale. Returning to migration distance, we highlight that they should not be treated as universally shared categories in knowledge organization and representation. In contrast, resolving such vagueness requires richer contextual information or additional semantic signals.

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Songlin Wang, Krzysztof Janowicz, Ailin Benitez Cortes, Marion Borderon, Yingjing Huang, Mina Karimi, Zilong Liu, Annika Süß, and Patrick Sakdapolrak. Conceptual Vagueness in Human and LLM Representations: Evidence from Migration Distance Categorization (Short Paper). In 17th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 393, pp. 21:1-21:9, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2026.21

Author Details

Songlin Wang
  • Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna, Austria
Krzysztof Janowicz
  • Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna, Austria
Ailin Benitez Cortes
  • Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna, Austria
Marion Borderon
  • Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna, Austria
Yingjing Huang
  • Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna, Austria
Mina Karimi
  • Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna, Austria
Zilong Liu
  • Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna, Austria
Annika Süß
  • Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna, Austria
Patrick Sakdapolrak
  • Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna, Austria

Supplementary Materials

References

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