Towards people-centric smart cities: A comparative evaluation of citizens’ sense of gain in pilot cities in China

Abstract

Although the citizens’ sense of gain (CSG) has become a vital standard reflecting the people-centric concept, taking into account both objective material gain and subjective spiritual happiness. However, the existing evaluation research on smart cities is still limited to a single objective or subjective perspective, and the CSG level that can reflect the sustainability of smart cities is not clear. This study addresses this gap by introducing a comprehensive method for evaluating CSG in smart cities. The proposed method combines the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), entropy weight method (EWM) and ideal solution similarity ranking preference method (TOPSIS) to evaluate the CSG in 19 pilot smart cities in China. The empirical findings explore the CSG level in China’s pilot smart cities, revealing that Shanghai, Beijing, and Nanjing exhibit the highest level of CSG, and a significant correlation is observed between smartness and CSG. The CSG also show variety in different smart cities (i.e. urbanization rate and region) and among heterogeneous citizens (i.e. age, education background, and cognition of smart city). At the same time, this study provides support for each pilot city’s CSG enhancement strategy. In general, this study addresses the existing gap in evaluating CSG in smart cities, and provides valuable implications for policymakers to ensure the sustainability of smart cities in China.