Public Perceptions About Smart Cities: Governance and Quality-of-Life in Hong Kong

Abstract

This study analyzes public perceptions about the impact of ‘smart cities’ programs on governance and quality-of-life. With smart city scholarship focusing primarily on technical and managerial issues, political legitimacy remains relatively underexplored—particularly in non-Western contexts. Drawing on a Hong Kong-based survey of over 800 residents conducted in 2019, this study analyzes the results of probit regressions on dependent variables for governance (participation, transparency, public services, communication, and fairness) and quality-of-life (buildings, energy-environment, mobility-transportation, education, and health). Findings show more optimism about the impact of smart cities on quality-of-life than on governance. Awareness about the smart city concept associates positively with expectations about smart city benefits, but the effect is sensitive to education level and income. This study deepens understandings about the political legitimacy of smart cities, at a time when urban governments are accelerating investments in related technologies. More broadly, it adds contextual nuance to research about state-society relations and, at a practical level, supports policy recommendations to strengthen information and awareness campaigns, better articulate smart city benefits, and openly acknowledge limitations.

State-society relations and government technology: a survey of public awareness and communication in Hong Kong

“…Connecting the novel application of critical theoretical perspectives with practice, and grounding these perspectives in empirical observation are crucial steps in escorting this line of inquiry to a new generation of theory-making and practical relevance. This study advances that effort through surveys and quantitative analysis, building on survey-based work by Hartley (2023Hartley ( , 2021 that examines public perceptions about the mechanics of Hong Kong's smart city policies, their contribution to quality of life, and related policies. This article proceeds with a background of the Hong Kong case, followed by a description of the research methodology and a presentation and discussion of findings.…”

“…Enabling conditions include not only the mechanics of smart city applications but also ancillary policies concerning local economic development, resident quality-of-life, and the built and natural environments (see Aldegheishem [2019] for a systematic review). In democratic settings, success factors for almost any policy effort include political legitimacy, trust, and state-society relations; these are now receiving more empirical attention in the smart cities literature (Meijer and Bolívar, 2016; Datta and Odendaal, 2019; Yigitcanlar et al, 2020a,b; Hartley, 2021, 2023; Li and Yarime, 2021; Zhang et al, 2022).…”

Development of a citizen participation public service innovation model based on smart governance

“…Efficient and effective public services that meet citizens’ needs should be provided on time (Araujo et al 2013 ; Hartley 2023 ). Thus, public service policy development should be preceded by collecting opinions from service users and reflecting them in policies.…”

“…In particular, the pandemic has accelerated the use of advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs) to facilitate various innovative contact free service delivery models (Lee and Lee 2021 ). During the pandemic, governments became agile organizations supported by advanced ICTs for public service delivery with citizen collaboration and participation (Ryu et al 2022 ; Hartley 2023 ). The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that citizens' participation is essential for the implementation of the smart governance model (Hong et al 2020 ; Ryu et al 2022 ; Hartley 2023 ).…”

“…During the pandemic, governments became agile organizations supported by advanced ICTs for public service delivery with citizen collaboration and participation (Ryu et al 2022 ; Hartley 2023 ). The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that citizens' participation is essential for the implementation of the smart governance model (Hong et al 2020 ; Ryu et al 2022 ; Hartley 2023 ). However, there is a paucity of practical, academic, and/or empirical research.…”