The modern age has heralded a shift from the industrial society, in which natural resources are crucial input factors for the economy, towards a knowledge society. To date, sustainability literature has treated knowledge—and in particular digital artifacts—mainly as a means to the end of achieving sustainable development. In this conceptual paper, we argue that digital artifacts themselves ought also to be considered as resources, which also need to be sustainable. While over-consumption is a problem facing natural resources, with sustainable digital artifacts, underproduction, and underuse are the biggest challenges. In our view, the sustainability of digital artifacts improves their potential impact on sustainable development. A theoretical foundation for digital artifacts and their ecosystem allows us to present the relevant research on digital information, knowledge management, digital goods, and innovation literature. Based on these insights, we propose ten basic conditions for sustainable digital artifacts and their ecosystem to ensure that they provide the greatest possible benefit for sustainable development. We then apply those characteristics to four exemplary cases: Linux kernel development, Bitcoin cryptocurrency, the Wikipedia project, and the Linking Open Drug Data repositories. The paper concludes with a research agenda identifying topics for sustainability scholars and information systems academics, as well as practitioners. A number of suggestions for future studies on digital sustainability are also put forward.

In smart city contexts, voluntary citizen reporting can be a particularly valuable source of information for local authorities. A key question in this regard is what motivates citizens to contribute their data. Drawing on motivation research in social psychology, the paper examines the question of whether self-concern or otherorientation is a stronger driver of citizen reporting engagement. To test their hypotheses, the authors rely on a sample of users from the mobile application ''Zurich as good as new'' in Switzerland, which enables citizens to report damages in and other issues with the city's infrastructure. Data was collected from two different sources: motivation was assessed in an online user survey (n = 650), whereas citizen reporting engagement was measured by the number of reports per user from real platform-use data. The analysis was carried out using negative binomial regression. The findings suggest that both self-concern and other-orientation are significant drivers of citizen reporting engagement, although the effect of self-concern appears to be stronger in comparison. As such, this study contributes to a better understanding of what motivates citizens to participate in citizen reporting platforms, which are a cornerstone application in many smart cities.

Next to the common goals efficiency and effectiveness the notion of public value considers also social aspects relevant to society. However, only a few studies have measured how the population appreciates the value of services by the public sector. So far the potential use of such services has only been predicted in advance based on expert opinion. We close this research gap by an empirical study (n = 738) on the open government platform "Züri wie neu", a Swiss adoption of the FixMyStreet initiative from UK. On this platform citizens of Zürich report damages and defects of infrastructure with a user-friendly web and mobile application.The results indicate that the participants appreciate time-savings (efficiency), comfort, and interaction with the public service (both effectiveness). In addition we observed above average trust-building with the government, personal knowledgeability and the feeling of participatory decision making (all three of them social values). This explains why efficiency and effectiveness are not the only benefits for the citizens by such platforms but social values are relevant for them, too.

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