Enhancing the diffusion of e-participation tools in smart cities

Abstract

E-participation tools are a part of the transition process to smart governance, but sometimes the adoption rate among citizens is lower than municipalities expect. This article aims to find new or underestimated factors that drive the adoption process of innovative e-participation tools. Research data help explore three adoption factors: Citizens' Participatory Experience (how experienced people are in offline participation), Citizens' Technological Innovativeness (how innovative people are), and Innovativeness of City (how many participatory technologies municipalities offer). Based on logistic regression, all these factors proved significant. Next, we show how important it is for the municipality to offer more e-participation tools. More tools increase the adoption rate up to more than 70%. In addition, we show which tools are most successful among Czech cities and their citizens.