A citizen participation model for co-creation of public value in a smart city

ABSTRACT

Information technologies, social media and the Internet of Things are tools that may encourage civic participation for the co-creation of public value and can strengthen the role of citizens in urban governance. This work seeks to explore of how social media and IoT based participation enhances the interaction between government and citizen, and for government, what capabilities are required for continuous citizen participation. The paper examines the power dynamics between government and citizens employing Giddens’s theory of structuration as an analytical framework. In addition, dynamic capability theory has been applied to determine the capabilities of government needed for continuous civic participation, while proposing a citizen participation model for public value co-creation. The proposed model can serve as a framework for recognizing the vital role of citizens in public policymaking and public service provision in the smart era.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizen-led participation
• public value Co-creation
• dynamic capability
• structuration theory
• Internet of Things
• social media
• smart city

Introduction

Cities play an important role in socioeconomic development, with 80% of GNP worldwide produced in cities (United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), 2014). However, urban population concentrations have also raised challenges for humans (Hu & Zheng, 2021). Among these are the issues considered to ensure residents’ quality of life and the sustainability of city development (Rodríguez-Bolívar, 2015). Information and Communications Technology (ICT) are considered essential technological means to mitigate these challenges and increase cities “smartness” (European Parliament, 2014).

In 2011, Caragliu et al. define a smart city as follows: “We believe a city to be smart when investments in human and social capital and traditional (transport) and modern (ICT) communication infrastructure fuel sustainable economic growth and a high quality of life, with a wise management of natural resources, through participatory governance.” The implementation of “disruptive” technologies into smart city initiatives has also brought about changes in public value creation, which is the real purpose of smart city (Rodríguez-Bolívar, 2018). Here, “public value” is produced through the creation and fulfillment of services and technologies that properly utilize opportunities in cities, deal with social tasks, and achieve policy targets. Therefore, creating public value is the ultimate target of smart cities, and in this context the obligation of smart city governments is regarded as providing public value to its citizens. Increasingly, public value creation is shifting from a top-down to a cooperative approach, which is termed the “co-creation of public value” (Brandsen & Honingh, 2018; Guenduez et al., 2020).

Citizen participation is a prerequisite of public value co-creation, and ensures the legitimacy of public policy and its successful implementation while improving the effectiveness of public service, thus increasing citizens’ trust in government (Brandsen et al., 2018; Jakobsen, 2013; Thomsen, 2017). Furthermore, with ICTs widely implanted in citizens’ everyday lives, residents’ role in the public value creation process is becoming more crucial (Allen et al., 2020; Lee & Porumbescu, 2019).

Citizen-led ICT approaches in smart cities include 311 systems, e-petition systems, social media approaches, and IoT approaches (Gao, 2018; Hedestig et al., 2018; Henman, 2019; Moon, 2018). The 311 system is a highly successful non-emergency service system in many local governments that allows citizens to report and track various issues. Meanwhile, many governments worldwide have been using the e-petition system as a channel for citizens’ requests. Although both the 311 system and the e-petition system are for public value co-creation, in terms of the process, they are demand-responsive. In other words, citizens communicate with a government with their specific needs, and government agencies provide public service or formulate public policies according to the citizens’ demands. In such a setting there are no government responses unless there are certain demands from citizens. However, as not all citizens communicate with the government, government may not make active efforts to grasp citizens’ needs. Therefore, co-creative approaches ensure that governments respond to the specific needs of certain residents but are hardly robust in grasping what the majority of residents are wanting. Thus, our study focuses on social media and IoT approaches in which the role of the government is relatively active.

In order to create public value, it is important to understand what citizens want, thus in this scenario the social media role is critical. From the citizens’ perspective, it is not only a critical channel to communicate with the government but also an arena within which residents share their ideas and the issues related to their daily lives (Gibbons, 2020). Alternatively, from the government’s perspective, analysis of content produced from social media–based citizen participation allows an agency to grasp citizens’ needs and extract insights for public value creation (Hedestig et al., 2018).

Many authors argue that social media would be a crucial means of making public policy and public service more citizen-centric (Criado et al., 2013; Linders, 2012; Picazo-Vela et al., 2016). Also, the proliferation of social media has led citizens to leave government websites and voluntarily discuss policy agendas on these informal channels. In 2009, Macintosh and her coauthors emphasize the importance of utilizing synergy between participation through government dedicated platforms and discussions freely conducted by citizens on social media without government intervention (Macintosh et al., 2009).

With the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT), new opportunities have been opened up for the public sector to harness the potential of IoT, defined as: “a global infrastructure for the information society, enabling advanced services by interconnecting (physical and virtual) things based on existing and evolving interoperable information and communication technologies” (Recommendation ITU-T Y, 2012). IoT built into the public infrastructure of the city creates an environment in which citizens can be involved in value creation. The data obtained from IoT allows public sectors to respond to the needs of citizens in a timely manner, and the analysis of the IoT data can contribute to performance evaluation (Guenduez et al., 2020). Using public or private infrastructure with built-in IoT, citizens become co-creators of public value by contributing to the insight extraction for value creation, and opening up new communication channels (Guenduez et al., 2020).

Both social media and IoT based participation are considered citizen-led, given that they are conducted freely by citizens without government intervention (Simonofski et al., 2021). To provide citizens with more opportunities to participate in the creation process of public value, combining social media with the IoT is considered an alternative (Hedestig et al., 2018).

Due to using citizen-led approaches such as social media and IoT-based participation in public value creation in cities, traditional and hierarchical relationships between government and citizens have been changing, and the citizens’ role may be strengthening. Some researchers have implied that the introduction of ICT is changing the relationship between government and citizens in the public value creation process, and organizational changes are needed (Boehner & DiSalvo, 2016; Henman, 2019; Vlachokyriakos et al., 2016), but the change mechanism is not obvious and the government’s capacity to react to these changes is unclear. This is because research on IoT and social media fields have not yet fully matured (Suresh et al., 2014).

To fill this research gap, we conducted a study to answer the following research questions;

• First, in public value creation in smart cities, due to social media and IoT-based citizen participation, what is the mechanism by which the relationship between government and citizens changes?

• Second, corresponding to the reshaped interface between government and citizens, what governmental capabilities are necessary for operating the public value co-creation process?

To answer these research questions, we have conducted an analysis using Giddens’s Structuration Theory (Giddens, 1984) and Dynamic Capability Theory (Teece et al., 1997) as a theoretical framework. Giddens’s structuration theory was used as a theoretical framework to analyze changes in the relationship between government and citizens caused by introducing IoT and social media from a macro perspective. On the other hand, dynamic capability theory has been used to investigate the change in the meso level, corresponding to changes in the macro level, that is, the government’s capability needed to operate the public value co-creation process in response to the relationship change between government and citizens. We show through a case study how the analytical framework proposed is applied to identify technological and organizational problems in the NOMAD¹ project.

The remainder of this paper is as follows: first, we explain two components of citizen-led participation in the smart city: social media and IoT-based participation, and mention complementarity between them in participation; second, conduct a structuration theory analysis of citizen-led participation, revealing how the combination of social media and IoT participation accelerates citizen empowerment in urban governance; third, determine the government’s capacity to operate public value co-creation, in a perspective of dynamic capability, including risk management capabilities, and propose a dynamic capability model for citizen participation in a smart city; fourth, discuss the relationship between the two theories and propose a citizen participation model for public value co-creation; fifth, we show through a case study how the analytical framework proposed is applied to identify technological and organizational problems in the NOMAD project.

Citizen-led participation for the co-creation of public value in a smart city

Social media approach

In general, social media have been accepted as an effective means for public value co-creation (Criado et al., 2013; Linders, 2012; Picazo-Vela et al., 2016), and research related to it has been conducted in government-led and citizen-led settings of crowdsourcing and social media monitoring (SMM). Crowdsourcing is defined as “a type of participative online activity in which an individual, an institution, a non-profit organization, or company proposes to a group of individuals of varying knowledge, heterogeneity, and number, via a flexible open call, the voluntary undertaking of a task” (Estellés-Arolas & González-Ladrón-De-Guevara, 2012, p. 197). Public organizations have used crowdsourcing as a first step to harness the potential of social media in public value co-creation, in which governments have played a leading role. In this scenario, the government presented specific topics related to social issues, public policy, and public service on social media and required that citizens provide their thoughts and opinions. In crowdsourcing, participants can earn various benefits, such as making money, developing their creative abilities, dialoguing with other professionals, showing off their presence, and building a career of future employment, whilst government agencies can gain insights necessary for public policymaking and public service provision from the creative (but not all) participants.

Another social media approach for public value co-creation is social media monitoring (Bekkers et al., 2013; Loukis et al., 2017). According to Fensel et al. (2012), SMM refers to a continuous, systematic monitoring and analysis of social media that citizens use in their daily lives. Initially, SMM has been harnessed by private organizations to gain opinions about their services or products and extract insights for product development from customers, but later expanded to public sectors as an approach for reflecting the citizens’ thoughts and knowledge in public policymaking and public service provision (Loukis et al., 2017). Government agencies monitor, collect and analyze social media content generated by citizens voluntarily without government intervention. The raw voices of citizens on social media enable government agencies to grasp what citizens want and what citizens’ sentiments on government policies are, playing a crucial role in insight extraction that can be employed to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of public services and to formulate citizen-friendly policy.

The social media approach has been recognized as a good paradigm for government to involve citizens in public value creation, but there are several limitations in practice. Table 1 shows the limitations of social media approaches in citizen participation for public value co-creation. This investigation is not exhaustive but intended to present a summary of the most relevant limitations of social media approaches in public value co-creation.

Table 1. Limitations of the social media approach in citizen participation for public value co-creation.

Limitations	Social Media Application Setting		Sources
	Crowd-sourcing	Social Media Monitoring
Limitations with the characteristics of a crowd diversity and knowledgeability of crowd representativeness of crowd	✔	✔	Brabham (2012); Hedestig et al. (2018); Loukis et al. (2017)
Limitations with digital divide and participation inequality	✔	✔	Brabham (2012); Lam and Ma (2019); Tang et al. (2019)
Limitations with transparency and trust	✔		Brabham (2012); Dwivedi et al. (2017); Janssen et al. (2017)
Limitations with the task that the crowd has to deal with, crowdsourcing process encourage competition in hackathons lack of collaboration awareness among participants lack of understanding of task	✔		Adler and Chen (2011); Majchrzak and Malhotra (2013)
Limitations with manipulation	✔		Brabham (2012)
Limitations with inadequate design of the digital platform appropriation for participation and collaboration, ease of use, popularity, visual appeal, etc.	✔	✔	Nam (2012)
Limitations with diversity of social media	✔	✔	Hedestig et al. (2020)
State of social media use in local government empirical evidence from many authors research, SM mainly serve as channel for self-promoting and pushing information to citizens.	✔	✔	Brainard and McNutt (2010); Hedestig et al. (2018); Picazo-Vela et al. (2016)

The limitations of the social media approach are, first, associated with the characteristics of participants (Brabham, 2012; Hedestig et al., 2018; Loukis et al., 2017). What a participant group consisted of and how it was organized affects the outcome of the participant’s discussion. Government is not the representative of any particular group but is the representative of all citizens living in the local area. Therefore, if the government harnessed insights extracted from the contents to policymaking and public service without considering whether the crowd conducting debates on social media can fully represent a majority of citizens, it would be criticized by citizens for being biased and of poor quality.

Second, it is possible that some citizens could be excluded from participation, due to the digital divide and participation inequality (Brabham, 2012; Lam & Ma, 2019; Tang et al., 2019). For example, by March 2020, the number of non-Internet users in China was 496 million, while 51.6% of non-Internet users did not access the Internet, due to a lack of computer or network skills, and 19.5% who were unable to access the Internet, due to educational restrictions (China Internet Network Information Centre [CNNIC], 2020). Not reflecting citizens who are excluded from participation in public policymaking and service provision, is unfair and successful execution would be difficult to secure.

Third, government agencies have to take into account the transparency and trust issues in crowdsourcing (Brabham, 2012; Dwivedi et al., 2017; Janssen et al., 2017).

Crowdsourcers must accurately disclose the agendas to the crowd to harness the potential of participants, but the parameters that describe the agendas may include internal data that the crowdsourcer does not want to be known to the crowd, which might lead to exposing the weakness of the organization. This can lead to a loss of trust in government. So, it cannot be said that all public agencies have the willingness that utilizes crowdsourcing for the co-creation of public value.

Fourth, a limitation of the social media approach is that the topics discussed by participants may not reach a consensus, causing competitiveness among conflicting arguments (Adler & Chen, 2011). Persons have different views and interests on social issues and public services. The different viewpoints and needs of citizens could make consensus impossible, preventing policymakers from finding applicable solutions.

Fifth, like some aspects of participatory culture, manipulation is possible (Brabham, 2012). In crowdsourcing takes place in an open environment, it is difficult to argue that the results are “of citizens, by citizens” as some individuals can manipulate the process to influence the results. In 2012, Brabham argues that crowdsourcing can never be a perfect substitute for good results, especially when it comes to government affairs.

Sixth, limitations in the social media approach, are related to the design of the digital platform. If the level of digital platform design for social media–based participation does not reach a reasonable level, good results cannot be expected from citizen participation. There are studies on the design theory that the design of a digital platform limits or induces human behavior (e.g., participation behavior, behavior according to psychological desire not to read the homepage, etc.). In the design of a platform, it is necessary to consider aspects such as ease of use, visual characteristics, etc., whether functional attributes are suitable for citizen participation and cooperation between citizens and government staff (Nam, 2012). In terms of platform design, initiators also need implementation and adoption strategies aimed at different stakeholders such as individuals, private institutions, and public institutions.

Seventh, another limitation is that there are difficulties in data collection and processing due to the diversity of social media platforms used by citizens. For example, in the study of Hedestig et al. (2020), the social media platform commonly used by young people in the city surveyed was Snapchat, whereas the social media platform preferred by the middle-aged and older groups was Facebook or Instagram.

Finally, despite the high expectations that social media will play a vital role in making public administration citizen-friendly, realistic evidence has yet to show that social media is primarily used by government agencies as a communication channel between government and citizens, one of the tools for disseminating information to the public and realizing communication between public organizations (Hedestig et al., 2018; Picazo-Vela et al., 2016). In 2018, Hedestig et al., through a case study of the use of social media in local governments in Sweden and Norway, found that the high expectations for the use of social media in the public sector are still far from being met. In their study, the local government officials studied by researchers lacked the awareness that social media can become a valuable dialogue channel with citizens. Thus, citizen participation mechanisms for co-creation of public value such as crowdsourcing or SMM had no effect on the activities of local governments, and there was no long-term strategy or plan for them, using them solely to provide citizens with information on the public affairs and activities. Considering that these countries are leaders in the e-government field (United Nations, 2020), and despite scholars’ argument for the importance of social media approach for public value co-creation, it can be seen that the good results in practice are weak.

The limitations mentioned above may impede the initial purpose of achieving more democratic results in urban governance by empowering citizens in policymaking and public service through social media–based participation. Combining IoT and social media–based participation is an initiative that complements some of the limitations of the social media approach, resulting in citizen-friendly and more democratic results in urban governance, thus ultimately empowering citizens in government decision-making.

Internet of Things approach

The Internet of Things (IoT), which plays a crucial role in smart city initiatives, has also provided possibilities for civic participation. IoT based participation is not about expressing citizens’ opinions, but about being included in public value creation by contributing insight extraction necessary for policymaking and service provision through daily use IoT infrastructure. The latter creates an environment that strengthens citizens roles as co-producers of public service (Schaffers et al., 2011). Citizens can communicate with government with their demands by using objects with embedded IoT in their daily lives, so that IoT data can be processed to extract insights into previously unknown utility, effectiveness, and efficiency of the service and, at the same time provide feedback on government actions (Guenduez et al., 2020; Janssen et al., 2017). The information can help local governments with providing new services to citizens, private organizations, and public institutions, redesigning existing services, reducing administrative costs, and increasing service effectiveness and efficiency in various public areas.

Citizen participation through IoT is accomplished by public and private infrastructure embedded with IoT (Guenduez et al., 2020). Public infrastructure with built-in IoT creates a participatory environment for citizens (Kortuem et al., 2013), providing new opportunities for citizens to be included in public value creation. IoTs built into public infrastructure is not only used to collect data from the infrastructure but also stimulates and increases citizens’ awareness of participation in public affairs (DiSalvo et al., 2014; Nam & Pardo, 2014; Salim & Haque, 2015). For example, cameras installed along roads in smart cities allow the public sector to collect data related to road use by residents to utilize for public services provision, and, at the same time, they stimulate citizens’ awareness of compliance with traffic regulations, leading to changes in road user behavior. Also, meters installed in public service infrastructures such as water supply networks and power grids not only collect data on citizens’ service consumption context but also inform citizens of them in real-time. The data evokes citizens’ awareness of saving, and therefore, the data collected through the infrastructure in which IoTs is built are behavioral data reflecting citizens’ consciousness caused by the introduction of IoT. Meanwhile, citizen participation through private IoT infrastructure is an initiative that requires public institutions and citizens to be more interactive and cooperative (Guenduez et al., 2020). The latter show private IoT participation through case studies on DeSearch projects being developed by Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University Ravensburg-Friedrichshafen (Germany) and the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). The DeSearch project aims to serve a special group (e.g., the elderly or the intellectually disabled) who should be helped by others in their daily lives, which presupposes citizens’ conscious engagement of this initiative.

Researchers argue that citizen participation in a smart city can be divided into three categories: participation in the democratic process, participation as co-creator of public value and participation as a user of ICT tools (Berntzen & Johannessen, 2016; Simonofski et al., 2017). Given the above discussions it is believed that using data obtained from public and private IoT infrastructure for public value creation could be considered from the perspective of citizen participation, which raises great possibilities for smart city governments to provide citizen-centric public service and make public policies by opening new channels for communication between government agencies and citizens.

In the perspective of citizen participation, one advantage can be that IoT can stimulate residents to participate (Nam & Pardo, 2014; Salim & Haque, 2015). IoT embedded in the infrastructures of smart cities provokes and increases the citizens’ motivation to use public facilities by automatically informing citizens of service needs or statuses of utility. Next, IoT does not require citizens to own special skills in participatory activities, so it can create conditions to solve the digital divide problem. In public IoT participation, citizens need not perfect any new knowledge or skill for participation but can contribute to securing basic data for decision making and value creation (Berntzen & Johannessen, 2016; Guenduez et al., 2020; Simonofski et al., 2017).

Finally, IoT provides a unique communication channel between urban residents and the government that allows different groups in the city to participate in public value creation, resulting in more democratic results in policymaking and urban governance (Guenduez et al., 2020; Hedestig et al., 2018, 2020). Public IoT infrastructures such as electric power meters, water meters, parking systems, waste bins, and street lights collect data on consumption and usage pattern by citizens. Furthermore, processing the accumulated big data makes it possible to predict the public’s trends and demands regarding public infrastructure use. Even groups that could not participate in local government affairs, such as minors or temporary residents, can become co-creators of public value by contributing to the generation of information. Integrating these significant groups, would significantly contribute to improving democracy in urban governance. In this sense, IoT is also a social technology that enables most people to participate (Cardone et al., 2013).

There is a complementary relationship between social media and IoT-based participation, which are two components of citizen-led participation in smart cities. IoT-based participation, a bottom-up approach, changes the hierarchical relationship and the traditional view that governments are service providers while citizens are consumers of government service. In the smart era, the role of citizens is changing from consumers of government service to co-designers and co-creators of public service (Bertot et al., 2016; Uppström & Lönn, 2017), and with the ubiquitous IoT, the role of citizens as co-designers and co-creators is getting stronger. Citizens are ultimately empowered by influencing government service provision and policymaking through IoT-based participation (Guenduez et al., 2020).

Structuration theory analysis of citizen-led participation

A brief overview of structuration theory

Research in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has attempted to incorporate various social theories—e.g., actor-network theory (Braa et al., 2004), critical social theory (Ngwenyama & Lee, 1997), institutional theory (King et al., 1994), symbolic interactionism (Gopal & Prasad, 2000)—to get insights on social phenomena that result from adopting ICT for social practices. Among these, one of the most prominent is Giddens’s structuration theory (Poole & DeSanctis, 2004). According to Jones and Karsten (2008), in applying structuration theory, research at the organizational level show application to broader ICT phenomena. Giddens’s structuration theory can help understand the changes technology is bringing to our society. In 2017, Prasad says of structuration theory that it “is a carefully thought- out explanation of the processes whereby people routinely draw upon structures and use them, in either conventional or creative ways, thereby also sustaining and reproducing these structures themselves, albeit in somewhat altered forms” (p. 209). Structuration theory was developed from Giddens’s effort to overcome deficiencies in two social theories: “functionalism (including systems theory) and structuralism” that were “strong on structure, but weak on action” (Giddens, 1993. p. 4), emphasizing “the pre-eminence of the social whole over its individual parts” (Giddens, 1984, p. 1), and “the various forms of ‘interpretative sociology’” that were “strong on action, but weak on structurem” both having little to say on issues of “constraint, power and large-scale social organization” (Giddens, 1993, p. 4). In 1991, Giddens states that structuration theory would not to be regarded as a “theory of anything” but rather “in seeking to come to grips with the problems of action and structure, structuration theory offers a conceptual scheme that allows one to understand both how actors are at the same time the creators of social systems yet created by them” (p. 204). For those that observe it in the circumstances of social reproduction, structuration theory “is not a series of generalizations about how far ‘free action’ is possible in respect of ‘social constraint.’ Rather it is an attempt to provide the conceptual means of analysing the often delicate and subtle interlacing of reflexively organized action and institutional constraint.” (Giddens, 1991, p. 204).

In introducing structuration theory to the investigation of IoT-based participation in the co-production of public value, this paper acknowledges Giddens’s own mention that while structuration theory discusses many points of social research, it is not a research program (Giddens, 1991, p. 213). To analyze the relationship between actors and structure arising from the application of ICT to civic participation, it is important to understand some of the terminologies in Giddens’s structuration theory. According to Giddens (1984), “Human agents or actors have, as an inherent aspect of what they do, the capacity to understand what they do while they do it. The reflexive capacities of the human actor are characteristically involved in a continuous manner with the flow of day-to-day conduct in the contexts of social activity” (pp. 23–24). Agency refers to the capability of individual human agents to act independently or to make free decisions, while structures are seen as the rules and resources used by human agents in social reproduction. Resources are comprised of two types: allocative resources, which refers to the material objective that is derived from human domination over nature, and authoritative resource, which refers to non-material resources that are derived from “the capability of harnessing the activities of human beings” (Giddens, 1984). Rules can be referred to as normative elements and codes of signification. Structures tend to play enabling roles, at the same time constraining the actions of human agents. The social structure comprises three forms of signification, domination, and legitimation. Structures of signification are about the interpretation of our world. Structures of domination consist of allocative and authoritative resources. The structure of legitimation refers to moral norms and judicial systems. Human agents are conscious of the circumstances that they act, and routinely apply them in the production and reproduction of daily social conduct. In this circumstance, Giddens uses the term knowledgeability of agents, including tacit and discursive knowledge. According to the author, this knowledge is presented in either discursive or practice consciousness. Discursive consciousness refers to the reality that the human agent “can say, put into words, about the conditions of their action” (Giddens, 1983, p. 76). In this consciousness, it is important to know that not all human agents are necessarily aware of, but, with discursive consciousness, that practical consciousness exists. This refers to “what actors know, but cannot necessarily put into words, about how to go on in the multiplicity of context of social life” (Giddens, 1979, p. 5).

Structuration theory analysis of citizen-led participation

In this section, it is explained how citizens exercise their agency more fully in the process of decision-making through citizen-led participation based on the government’s recognition of citizens’ discursive and tacit knowledge in the context of the smart city (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Citizen-led participation process for public value co-creation: Perspective of structuration theory.

Social media aspect

In this scenario, based on their recognition of citizens’ knowledgeability, the smart city government continues to monitor citizens’ discussions on social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to grasp the needs and preferences of citizens. If the insights extracted from social media require public policy formulation or public service, the processes for them begins. If the government does not obtain enough insights for policymaking or public service provision, they ask citizens to participate in discussions through the dedicated e-participation platform. Citizens become part of the public value creation process of local government through discussions on their “owned” social media.

In 2009, Paddon reports an example in which the youth of Ontario in Canada become part of the local government’s decision-making process through social media (Paddon, 2009). The youth in Ontario opened their own Facebook page to argue against the proposed law for young drivers. It was acknowledged as worth considering in the number of participants on the Facebook page and the contents, ultimately, which affected legislative formulation. This shows that the youth in Ontario, through participating in the legislative process of local governments by harnessing social media they use in their daily lives have become part of the legislative process and have changed existing structure.

IoT aspect

In this scenario, the government continuously focuses on the behavioral expression of residents through the public and private IoT infrastructure, such as intelligent power grids, waste bins with embedded sensors, intelligent parking space systems, etc., to make decisions more collaborative and citizen-centered, and if it is necessary to formulate policies and provide public services, they should frame debates based on the insights obtained from analyzing the data.

In this initiative, including special groups such as minors and those who were unable to reflect their opinion in public policymaking or public service provision, and groups unable to participate in discussions on social media due to the digital divide, participation inequalities, etc., residents can contribute to insight extraction for public value creation by using public and private IoT infrastructure. From the perspective of structuration theory, transformative power is considered that has been attributed to IoT. This kind of activity, which meets Giddens’s definition of “reflexively organized action,” is regarded to be influencing the “institutional restriction” of public value co-creation by special social group members. In 2020, Hedestig et al., reported one example where pupils became a part of public value creation as a result of the adoption of IoT. The researchers installed sensors on the restroom doors at the public school with purpose to measure how often the restroom was used and appraise how often they would be cleansed. Then, they found that the restrooms in the main building had been rarely used. Instead, pupils used the restrooms in the next building. In an interview, pupils said that there is an open space outside the restrooms in the main building, where they could chat and exercise, etc., to enjoy breaks. The space inside the main building was too confined for pupils to enjoy rest, so they rarely used the restroom. Once the data were available, the school authorities began discussions to improve the status quo and make facilities more useful. Young pupils in the school became part of the school’s public service provision process. This example highlights that a specific group that could not be engaged in public value creation has participated in value creation through the use of IoT. In this example, the pupils ultimately have transformed the existing public value creation structure and became components.

From the structuration theory perspective, using the IoT approach is based on the government’s recognition of citizens’ tacit knowledge. As mentioned in the previous subsection, the tacit knowledge of the agent is difficult to express in words, but it is the knowledge that is applied to the process of action. One of the examples of tacit knowledge is body language (Spacey, 2020), which plays a crucial role in how individuals express their thoughts and communicate with others. According to “The Mehrabian Model,” 7%-10% of communication is through words, and 38% of communication is through intonations and speaking methods, whereas communication through body language such as gestures, pose, and facial expressions account for the majority at 55%. Therefore, many researchers have been exploring methods for automatically detecting and analyzing body language to extract information related to people’s non-verbal communication (Kolakowska et al., 2013; Li, 2012; Salloum et al., 2015). Moreover, for actors without verbal ability, body language becomes their only communication means. In public service provision to a particular group, identifying their wishes and needs and providing public service based on them is necessary, and in this scenario, IoT has great potential.

As these processes have continued, structure (i.e., resources and rules) are continuously reproduced by the contribution of citizens. Here, the government acts to improve the quality of citizens’ debates and sense citizens’ demands, as experts in the area, and ultimately the traditional hierarchical relationship between citizens and governments is transformed into the horizontal relationship.

The process mentioned above could be characterized by listening and looking, framing, and empowering. The government uses social media and IoT to listen and look at the voices and behaviors of citizens and if it has value for setting policy agenda or designing public service, frames it. Here, citizens use social media and IoT to communicate with the government about their needs and preferences, and the government reflects this in policymaking and service design, ultimately empowering citizens. If the government cannot sense enough policy suggestions in citizen-led participation, it could present the agenda in the government-dedicated e-participation platform to ask citizens to respond to the request.

A dynamic capability model for citizen participation in co-creation of public value

Dynamic capability and risk-management capability

Structuration is a dynamic process, not a static state (Jones & Karsten, 2008). In investigating a government’s capacity to launch a new social structure of value co-creation, it is necessary to consider continuous changes in the milieu surrounding the government. Considering that the dynamic capability theory provides a mechanism to continuously improve organizational performance by building and reconfiguring resources in a dynamic environment (Teece et al., 1997), to examine the government’s capability to enable citizens to exercise their agency, it is considered reasonable to use this theoretical framework. Furthermore, dynamic capability theory enables an in-depth analysis of the capabilities and resources required for organizational change.

The theory has been proposed to compensate for weaknesses in resource-based perspectives that overlook the rapidly changing external environment of an organization. The capacity of an organization to secure a continuous competitive advantage by integrating, building, and changing its resources and capabilities in response to rapidly changing external environments is called dynamic capability (Teece et al., 1997). According to Wang and Ahmed (2007), this dynamic capability consists of adaptive, absorptive and innovative capabilities. Adaptive capability is the ability to seize new opportunities and carve them out, expressed through the coordination of flexibility and capability in resource use with environmental changes. Absorptive capacity is the ability of an organization to recognize the value of new external information and accept and use it, including knowledge acquisition, absorption, change, and knowledge reform. Innovative capability is the capacity to continuously transfer knowledge to new products, services, processes, and systems for the benefit of the organization and its stakeholders.

Meanwhile, all actions are conducted in a dynamic, complex, and interconnected environment surrounding the organization, raising the possibility that the organization may face a number of potential risks. Advances in science and technology, changes in market conditions, and socioeconomic changes are also new sources of risk. The number of possible risks attributed to the rapid change and complexity of the environment is immeasurable and full preparedness is almost impossible (or at least uneconomic; Bogodistov & Wohlgemuth, 2017). Also, how the organization responds to the sudden occurrence of unforeseen risks plays an important role in ensuring its continued competitive advantage. Against this background, in 2017, Bogodistov and Wohlgemuth have proposed the concept of risk management capability as part of an organization’s dynamic capability. According to the authors, risk management capability is an organization’s ability to repeatedly avoid, mitigate, transfer, or intentionally accept risks in rapidly changing environments, thereby eliminating or mitigating the risk of internal and external environmental change, thus enabling the organization to create value.

There are always unanticipated risks in the citizen participation field in cities. For example, malicious cyberattacks are not predictable by the government, and while the probability of occurrence is not very high, but the impacts are serious, leading perhaps to a drastic decrease in citizens’ motivation to participate. Furthermore, participation cannot help but be affected by the socioeconomic, technological, and cultural environment, and the potential risks associated with them can in turn negatively affect citizen participation. From this perspective, it is argued that the government’s dynamic capacity for continuous civic participation should include adaptive capability, absorptive capability, innovative capability, as well as risk management capability.

A model of dynamic capabilities for citizen participation in smart government

The dynamic capabilities lead the organization to continuously integrate, recreate, and change its resources and capabilities in response to rapidly changing external environments, keeping a continuous competitive advantage. Meanwhile, changes in the external environment surrounding the organization can also be a source of risk. Thus, we consider the government’s capacity to continue citizen participation by applying components of dynamic capabilities (including risk management capability) to be important.

The adaptive capacity corresponds to the capability to redistribute allocative resources (e.g., dedicated e-participation platform, social media, IoT) and authoritative resources (e.g., agenda-setting authority), and renew rules accordingly. In other words, depending on the demands of citizens to participate, it is important to determine whether to allocate individual participation resources alone, or simultaneously to allocate social media and IoT to citizen participation, or to combine social media or IoT with dedicated e-participation tools, or to combine these three resources, and to redistribute the resources, and to change the rules accordingly. The absorptive capability for continuous civic participation consists of a continuous monitoring process of participation resources in order to discover insights underlying policymaking and integrating big data analysis resulting from social media and IoT; these link in turn to policy agenda formation based on government recognition of citizen discourse and tacit knowledge. Innovative capability is the capability to provide new citizen participation channels other than social media and IoT. In the context of citizen participation, risk management capability is, first, a continuing revaluation and prioritization about factors that degrade citizen motivation to participate. Degrading risk factors continue to change due to the complexity of the city environment, advances in science and technology, and socioeconomic transformation. Today, for example, the negative influence of the digital divide (Lam & Ma, 2019; Tang et al., 2019) on the increase of participants may be greater than the negative influence of individuals’ indifference resulting from the oversupply of participation means (Salim & Haque, 2015). Another example is that, at some point, a leap in information security technology may lead to reduce security concerns and increase numbers of participants, but in turn, the enhancement of cyberattack techniques and the resulting sudden events by malicious attackers will have a new and negative influence on citizens’ motivation to participate, resulting in a new cyclical decrease in the number of participants. Therefore, the government should continue to reassess factors that negatively affect citizens’ motivation to participate and prioritize risk management based on the magnitude of the negative influence.

The second pillar of risk management capability is risk resiliency (Bogodistov & Wohlgemuth, 2017). This refers to the capability of an organization’s management to timely recognize risks, to prioritize, and maintain risk management based on these priorities under dynamic circumstances. Continuous reassessment of risk factors in civic participation would help prevent the suspension of civic participation in advance, while risk resiliency would facilitate the government to manage it smoothly once an event has occurred. In terms of citizen participation in the smart city, another pillar of risk management capability is the notification to citizens of the outcome of risk treatment. The dynamic capability model is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. A dynamic capability model of citizen participation for public value co-creation.

Citizen participation model for the co-creation of public value in smart government

Dynamics between macro- and meso-level of public administration

The previous section applied structuration theory to the new social structure of public value co-creation, and used dynamic capability theory to identify the government’s capacity to implement the newly formed social structure of co-creation. The introduction of IoT and social media constitutes a macro-level approach to public administration, while the government’s ability to implement the newly formed social structure is a meso-level approach (Roberts, 2020b). Macro analysis of public administration focuses on higher-level issues related to the formation of social structures, while meso analysis centers on the organizational context, which is a lower level. Changes in the external environment, such as socioeconomic development and technological progress, lead to changes at the macro level, such as social structure reshaping, inducing changes at the meso level, such as organizational transformation and government reform (Roberts, 2020a). Changes at the meso level (i.e., reorganization, government reform, etc.) are essential conditions for successfully implementing certain initiatives in response to changes at the macro level. As such, the macro- and meso-level are closely related to each other, and the two theoretical frameworks that follow the analysis do not exclude each other and provide an understanding of the social phenomena and processes at different levels of analysis.

A citizen participation model for public value co-creation in the smart city

Social media and IoT provide their unique channels that enable citizens to participate in the public value co-creation process in smart cities, respectively. Social media and IoT approaches cooperate with the smart city government to understand what citizens want thereby formulating citizen-friendly policies and providing effective and efficient service. Here, social media–based participation is based on the government’s recognition of citizens’ discourse knowledge and is an initiative that allows citizens to contribute to the public value creation and ultimately exercise their agency in determining what society needs. However, as mentioned earlier, some practical limitations of the social media approach prevent them from sufficiently supporting citizens to participate in the public value co-creation process and to fully exercise their agency. Ubiquitous IoT has opened another way for the government to fully grasp the demands of citizens, enabling the formulation of resident-friendly policies and providing efficient and effective services. IoT-based citizen participation, based on the governments’ acknowledgment of citizens’ tacit knowledge, is an initiative that allows the latter to exercise their agency in determining what society needs, complementing the weakness of social media–based participation. From this consideration, this paper proposes a citizen participation model as shown in Figure 3 in order to harness the positive aspects of government-led participation and citizen-led participation.

Figure 3. Citizen participation model for public value co-creation in smart city.

According to Porwol et al. (2018), in traditional government-led participation (GleP), in which government provides participation agendas to citizens through dedicated e-participation platforms and requires citizens to respond to them, authoritative resources remain in government hands, greatly restricting the exercise of citizens’ agency. In addition, in government-led participation, it holds a dominant position in determining what society needs and the government alone operates the system by forming system rules, so the concept of the dialectic of control is weak. In this scenario, there is a lack of cooperation between government and citizens, and ultimately e-participation initiatives may not be sustainable.

In the model proposed here, allocative and authoritative resources are dynamically allocated to citizens. In other words, the government continues to take note of the CleP components and to formalize the discussion if necessary. If the government does not get enough insight from the input of citizens, it can be opened up through a dedicated, more structured e-participation platform. In the proposed model, two pillars of citizen participation, GleP and CleP, operate as synergies. A key element in the synergy model is that the government recognizes the contributions of citizens, acts as an expert, and forges a consensus in order to make it more procedural. Citizens’ opinions make the decision-makers better aware of the problems that citizens identify and are interested in solving, thus making the policy agenda more citizen-centered. This approach allows a majority of residents to exercise their agency in reproducing structures without being impeded by participation inequality and digital division, and system rules are continuously updated and reproduced. Ultimately citizens are empowered in the process of decision making.

Case study: NOMAD project

In this section, we introduce a summary of our case study, an analysis of the state of play of the project NOMAD based on the proposed analytical framework and the application of our framework in determining future requirements for the citizen participation initiative in the smart city.

Overview

Our case study involves project NOMAD (for details see Appendix). The project has developed an online platform for decision-makers to understand the views, arguments, and emotions of citizens, as expressed on the Web, to take them into account when drawing up policy, thus strengthening open and cooperative governance. The platform is based on the use of data mining techniques from internet sources (websites, blogs, social networking accounts) and the extraction of content that may be related to an existing or future policy proposal. The tools that have been created in the 3 years of project implementation provide capabilities for advanced search, automatic tracking of citizens’ arguments, and public sentiment, as reflected in the informal consultations conducted daily on the Web. The results are provided to the system user in an intelligible way, through the visualization of aggregate results.

Analysis of the state of play of the NOMAD project

NOMAD is a platform for policymakers to monitor, analyze, and present citizens’ discussions (freely conducted without government intervention) on blogs and social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (Charalabidis et al., 2012). On this platform, the process of dealing with citizens’ discussions on social media to extract insights for policy formulation includes four stages: LISTEN, ANALYZE, RECEIVE, and ACT. In LISTEN, the first step, attention is paid to what citizens say, what they need, and what their emotions about the policies in implementation are. For these, the program attempts to navigate the web in an automated and organized way and visit only content related to previously known topics (named “crawler” in this platform). The second step, ANALYZE, includes advanced content analysis and processing to analyze the citizens’ needs, opinions, concerns, suggestions, emotions, and other information hidden in citizens’ conversations. The basic form of information processed here is the texts. In the RECEIVE stage, the policymaker is provided with the knowledge obtained in the previous step. The platform provides policymakers with discovered opinions, associations with policy concepts, and statistics on their importance and impact. Using visualization technology, all related data are expressed in forms that show important statistical figures. In the fourth step, ACT, policymakers use the acquired cluster of issues, demands, and proposals to draft policy agendas, which can be examined against social public opinion. In this step, policy texts are posted on various social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) and residents are requested to submit their opinions, positions, and suggestions.

It is believed that the role of the NOMAD platform is not only to make local governments better aware of social issues, citizens’ opinions, and citizens’ emotions for government activity, but also to ensure that participants exercise their agency more fully in various decisions on urban affairs. For these purposes, the NOMAD platform continues to monitor social media and blogs such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and analyze citizens’ discussions on social media, providing policymakers with insights needed to make policies and to provide public service, and make it possible to set a policy agenda directly from citizens’ discussions.

This project is considered successful compared to the government-led approach in terms of empowering citizens in urban governance, given that citizens’ discussions are freely conducted without government intervention and the subjects of discussions are very diverse. From our theoretical lens, the NOMAD project ultimately empowers citizens in urban governance because it, based on the government’s recognition of the citizens’ knowledge, extracts insights necessary for public value creation from citizens’ spontaneous discussions, and adds to setting policy agendas. In this project, citizens are provided with allocative and authoritative resources to more sufficiently exercise their agency in determining what is needed for society. However, as mentioned above, due to the practical limitations of the social media approach, in this project, authoritative and allocative resources are allocated only to specific groups, such as digitally savvy citizens. It means that the NOMAD initiative is weak in sufficiently ensuring that the needs and opinions of citizens are completely reflected in the affairs of the smart city. This supports our hypothesis that the social media approach is limited in ensuring that the government fully understands the real opinions and needs of citizens. In other words, this project is vulnerable in terms of permitting a broad range of citizens in smart cities to sufficiently exercise their agency in the public value creation process.

Considered from the perspective of dynamic capabilities, the social media approach does not sufficiently guarantee the representation of citizens, so it lacks absorptive capability. Considering that there is a participation channel other than social media (such as IoT in smart cities), innovation capabilities are somewhat lacking. In this platform, project developers focused only on social media approaches without compatibility with other communication channels, such as government-led participation platforms and IoT, so adaptive capability does not exist.

Combining IoT-based participation

Given the practical limitations of the social media approach and insufficient compatibility with other participation channels, the NOMAD project does not sufficiently guarantee citizen participation in urban affairs. Therefore, we propose the integration of IoT-based participation, which makes it possible to mitigate the current issues of social media–based participation. Considering that the IoT approach produces more valuable results than using only one social media approach, it is considered that IoT integration fills some gaps existing in this platform and is ultimately better at grasping citizens’ opinions and needs, consequently accelerating citizen empowerment in urban governance. Moreover, the participation environment provided by the IoT built into the infrastructure of smart cities can make citizens feel better included in urban affairs and contribute to the public value creation. To ensure the quality of citizens’ contribution through IoT, the government can form discussions through communication channels such as social media and become an active participant and director of the discussions. All of the above changes would require the local government to possess new capacity, that is, adaptive, absorptive and innovation capability as well as risk management capability.

Conclusion

This study shows that social media–based participation is a citizen-centered initiative that allows residents to exercise their agency on structural change based on the government’s recognition of citizens’ knowledge, but cannot sufficiently balance resource allocation due to the limitations of social media, as mentioned in the previous section. It is clear from this study that the various weaknesses inherent in social media–based participation do not make citizen empowerment sufficient. In our view, developing a participatory model, including IoT-based participation, is an essential condition for improving democracy in making citizen-friendly policies and urban governance.

One major contribution of this study is the aim to provide the basis for implementing high-level citizen participation initiatives corresponding to the smart era, by combining social media approaches with IoT approaches. In this paper, the combination of social media and IoT in citizen participation raises several issues that await socio-technical resolution, but we regard as it is a feasible choice for urban governments.

Another major contribution of this study is the application of risk management capabilities, a component of dynamic capabilities, to manage risks that inhibit citizens’ motivation to participate. Our study of preceding research found that the complex, dynamic environment in which citizens live, the advances in science and technology, and socioeconomic changes all pose potential risks and that these negatively affect citizen participation. The sustainability of civic participation can be assured only when these potential risks are effectively managed, and the government must have adaptive, absorptive, and innovative as well as risk management capacity in order to continue citizen participation.

In this paper, prior studies dealing with social media approaches and IoT approaches individually in citizen participation were found, but no significant studies were found to combine social media approaches with IoT approaches in citizen-led participation. Our study is also a first attempt at applying risk management capabilities as a component of the government’s dynamic capability for continued civic participation.

In this sense, our study, for the scholar community, along with the rapid development of smart technologies, can be a guide to comprehensive and in-depth research on how the application of those technologies affects changes in the power relationship between citizens and government. For practical aspects, considering the potential benefits of social media and IoT approach in smart cities, the model proposed here can be one option for policymakers who are striving to ensure smooth implementation of government affairs and restore trust in government.

Despite the great potential of the IoT approach in citizen participation in public value co-creation, there are concerns about negative impacts. The most significant challenge is the growing skepticism about the blurring boundary between public and private realms. There are concerns about unauthorized access to personal data, concerns about whether government agencies will use data obtained for purposes other than public value creation, and fears whether the adoption of IoT will be the beginning of another stage of government surveillance for individuals. We believe that “smart” (in a smart city) means that it is possible to overcome all these challenges and to pursue only the positive aspects of the IoT, creating public value “for citizens, by citizens.”

Acknowledgments

I’d like to express my appreciation to Professor Andrew Kirby, a senior associate editor of the Journal of Urban Affairs. And I’d also like to express my thanks to the reviewers who helped me a lot in completing this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Haijun Cao

Haijun Cao is a Professor of public administration at Northeastern University. He focuses on three areas: (1) political science and public management theory, (2) social governance and network social governance, and (3) urban community governance. Cao’s work has been published in journals such as Chinese Public Administration and CASS Journal of Political Science, and Administrative Tribune, and his work has been funded by the National Social Science Fund of China, Liaoning Committee of the CPC, among others. His research has been featured on The People’s Daily, Chinese Urban Community Newspaper, and so on.

Chol I. Kang

Chol I. Kang is a PhD Student in School of Humanities and Law at Northeastern University, China. He focuses on ICT application in public management and value co-creation in a smart city.

Notes

1. http://www.nomad-project.eu/

Appendix A

The NOMAD project (“Policy Formulation and Validation through non-moderated crowdsourcing”), is partially funded by the “ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling” research initiative of the European Commission (detailed at https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/288513). The project is a partnership of the University of the Aegean, with the participation of the Greek Parliament, Democritus and Google, in the field of e-Government, co-financed by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Program. The coordinator of the project is the Laboratory of Information Systems of the Department of Information and Communication Systems Engineering of the University of the Aegean, while it is implemented by a group of a total of 9 European institutions: the NCSR. “Demokritos,” the Greek and Austrian Parliaments, the Fraunhofer Institute IGD Germany, and the companies Google, Athens Technology Center (ATC), Kantor Qwentes and Critical Publics.