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Top1. Introduction
In recent years, governors and policy makers worldwide have paid much attention to smart cities with aims to enhance efficiency of city infrastructure, utilities and services, as well as to create a more sustainable and liveable environment for citizens (Nam and Pardo, 2011). A smart city can be defined as a place seeking to integrate advanced information and communication technologies with city infrastructure and physical facilities to “address social, economic and environmental problems” (Townsend, 2013).
The set of advanced technologies for building smart cities can range from embedded sensors and hardware facilities in the infrastructure level, to mobile applications (also referred to as apps) in the user end (Nam and Pardo, 2011; Peng et al., 2017). In this context, large-scale deployment of hardware facilities and smart devices in city level will be very costly (Peng et al., 2017). In contrast, the cost of developing a mobile app is fairly low. Consequently, city authorities may often be more inclined to focus on hardware and infrastructural elements of smart cities, and sometimes may underestimate the importance of end-user apps (Peng et al., 2017). However, mobile applications are the actual tools used on a daily basis by citizens, who often may not pay much attention to infrastructural facilities. As such, a poorly designed mobile city app may not just lead to citizen dissatisfaction, but will also prevent the realization of intended benefits promised by smart city solutions.
In China, aligned with the global trend of smartness, the country has invested heavily in its national smart city initiative, with over 700 smart city projects across more than 500 Chinese cities initiated since 2012. Accompanied with these smart city investments, local authorities have initiated and launched hundreds of mobile city apps, which can now be easily downloaded by citizens. However, when these official city apps emerged in the everyday lives of millions of Chinese citizens, many design problems and deficiencies affecting their usage have become increasingly apparent to the general public. In fact, this phenomenon does not just occur in China. The study done by Peng et al. (2017) reported a range of crucial problems (e.g. low usability, persistent technical bugs, and functional deficiencies) embedded in a smart parking app provided by the Westminster city council in Greater London. Nevertheless, and despite the imperative need, there is very limited research that aims to capture a holistic view on current development and problems of smart city apps in the world in general and in the Chinese context in particular. The study reported in this paper thus attempts to fill this knowledge gap, by answering two research questions:
In order to answer these research questions, a total of 333 smart city apps initiated by local authorities in China, together with 15754 online comments, were collected, reviewed and analyzed. The results and lessons learned from this study will be of interest and importance to city governors, service providers, IT practitioners and researchers who are engaged with smart city development in China and worldwide.
Top2. Overview Of Literature On Smart City And Mobile Application
This section presents the current state of research for both smart city and mobile application fields. This critical review followed the funneled approach proposed by Saunders et al. (2003, pp. 44-50), using keyword searches (e.g. smart city, eco-city, smart technology, smart application, mobile application, mobile service, and smart city app) in a number of databases (e.g. Web of Science, Engineering Index, ScienceDirect, Emerald, Google Scholar, and ProQuest), as well as tracking forward and backward citations of identified papers.