Citizen Perceptions and Support for Smart City Projects: The Case of “Smart Santander”

Introduction

Nowadays, cities are complex systems that are characterized by massive numbers of interconnected citizens, businesses, means of transport, communication networks, services, and utilities (Neirotti, De Marco, Cagliano, Mangano, & Scorrano, 2014). The complexity of the social ecosystem in cities can bring up problems related to traffic, pollution, health, scarcity of resources, waste management, and poor infrastructure (Sujata, Saksham, Tanvi, & Shreya, 2014). These are important challenges for policy-makers. In this context, the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) applied to territories have created new opportunities to assure future viability and prosperity in metropolitan areas (Falconer & Mitchell, 2012; Secundo, Del Vecchio, Dumay, & Passiante, 2017; Lim, Kim, & Maglio, 2018), and to improve the economic, social and environmental sustainability of a city (Neirotti et al., 2014).

In particular, the integration of ICT within a city leads to the phenomenon of a “Smart City.” Smart cities use technology -Big Data and Internet of Things- to address all of the issues of the city in a “smarter” –i.e., more sustainable, livable, and efficient– way (Sujata et al., 2014). ICT helps cities make better use of their resources (Neirotti et al., 2014) by incorporating new value-added services based on real-time data: parking availability, traffic density, or waiting time in public transportation routes, among others. Also, wireless Internet and web 2.0 allow increased interconnectivity and interactivity between public administrations, citizens, and firms (Vicini, Bellini, & Sanna, 2012). All this is leading to higher empowerment of citizens in the urban decision-making processes and, consequently, to an increased co-creation of high added-value services in the cities.

In previous research on the planning and development of communities, an important field has been the citizens’ satisfaction with the community (Sirgy & Cornwell, 2001; Nunko & Ramkisson, 2011). More concretely, this field is specifically referred to as the citizens’ evaluations of government services (Nunko & Ramkisson, 2011). Taking into account that the implementation of a smart city project aims to improve the quality of life of citizens (Vicini et al., 2012; Buhalis & Amaranggana, 2014), we consider it important to know how the individuals perceive these smart initiatives. Despite the high interest in this topic, there is a lack of studies considering this perspective. With this in mind, our study focuses on the citizens. It examines their perceptions and attitudes towards smart cities in general as well as their evaluations and support for a specific smart city project. Also, we introduce the concept of familiarity with smart cities and, subsequently, establish several research questions to examine if the citizens´ perceptions, attitudes, and support are significantly different according to their level of familiarity with smart cities.