The Acceptance Model of Smart City Service: Focused on Seoul

Abstract

The goal of providing smart city services is not only simply building smart technology and infrastructure but also improving the quality of life of citizens who use smart city services and have positive experiences. This requires establishing service supply strategies considering citizens’ satisfaction levels by identifying the factors that affect the will or behavior of citizens who use smart city services. However, decision making regarding smart city policies and service supply in Korea is conducted through the central government-centered top-down mode, which lacks the consideration of how to improve citizens’ satisfaction levels or their intention to use technology. Thus, we proposed an acceptance model for smart city services, which is a theoretical model that offers a foundation for a model to evaluate the interaction levels of citizens toward smart city services based on the technology acceptance model, which is the most widely used tool to evaluate what factors affect the acceptance and use of information technology and system-based services. In addition, we defined research models by discussing previous studies that proposed factors that affect the acceptance of smart city and U-City services and urban public services. To empirically verify the research models proposed herein, we surveyed citizens in Seoul and conducted structural equation modeling using AMOS 28. As a result, we derived a total of eight factors (Quality, User Characteristics, Positive Attitude, Perceived Risk, Social Influence, Perceived Ease of Use, Perceived Usefulness, and Acceptance Intention) that affected the acceptance of smart city services and 42 assessment items from these factors. The results of this study are expected to be foundational data for establishing policies and systems for the improvement of citizens’ interaction level and continuous use of smart city services.