End-User Approach to Evaluating Costs and Benefits of Smart City Applications

Introduction

In the digital transformation of cities, making the information available and usable to relevant stakeholders is increasingly gaining importance. New studies call for expanding smart city research from the users' perspective, focusing on psycho-social dimensions of smart city services and applications (Lytras et al., 2021) and emphasise the relevance of citizen-oriented, i.e. user-oriented approaches in the development of smart city applications (Singh and Singh, 2018). However, lack of user involvement in the public sector and underdeveloped user-(citizen-) orientation have been acknowledged extensively (Ninčević Pašalić, Ćukušić and Jadrić, 2020; Verdegem and Verleye, 2009; Tan, Benbasat and Cenfetelli, 2013). The issues resulting from insufficient consideration of users' needs cause problems with applications not being accepted nor used in this specific context (Tomitsch, 2018). Consequently, studies emerge that focus on behavioural intention, i.e. intention to use a digital service or an app and uncover key elements of its provision in the public sector. Results imply that future studies on smart city services should focus on how those digital services are being delivered to end-users and whether these digital services meet citizens' needs at all (Wang et al., 2010; Bertot and Jaeger, 2006). In general, the authors noted a general lack of statistical or empirical rigour, formal theory testing or robust model building in the context of smart cities, especially in terms of usage level, although there is a practical and scientific need (Wirtz and Kurtz, 2016).

Motivated by the presented argumentation, this paper examines possibilities for applying the end-user approach in the form of Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA), which has been often neglected to evaluate the costs and benefits of smart city applications. In addition, results are being used to explore factors predicting the intention to use. The following research questions have been derived: How can CBA be used for examining factors influencing the intention to use smart city applications? Which factors can predict the intention to use smart city applications? The goals of this paper are: (1) use the CBA framework as an end-users approach for evaluating smart city applications; (2) devise an instrument based on CBA results (2) identify variables that predict the intention to use smart city applications. Research models commonly used for that purpose are presented in the theoretical background along with the elaboration of why a complementary approach that focuses on cost-benefit for users is more appropriate in predicting their intention to use a digital service. The next section elaborates the research methodology aiming to identify the most significant costs and benefits, and factors that could predict the intention to use selected smart city applications. The study results are presented in the following section, followed by a discussion and main conclusions of the paper.