Understanding and Acceptance of Smart City Policies: Practitioners’ Perspectives on the Malaysian Smart City Framework

Seng Boon Lim, Jalaluddin Abdul Malek, Md Farabi Yussoff Md Yussoff and Tan Yigitcanlar
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Seng Boon Lim: Center for Research in Development, Social and Environment (SEEDS), Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, University Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi 43600, Malaysia
Jalaluddin Abdul Malek: Center for Research in Development, Social and Environment (SEEDS), Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, University Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi 43600, Malaysia
Md Farabi Yussoff Md Yussoff: Federal Government Administrative Centre, Federal Department of Town and Country Planning, Ministry of Housing and Local Government, Putrajaya 62675, Malaysia
Tan Yigitcanlar: School of Architecture and Built Environment, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 17, 1-31

Abstract: Whilst a plethora of research exists on the smart cities and project performance evaluations, only few studies have focused on the smart city policy evaluation from the perspective of its acceptance by practitioners. This paper aims to generate insights by evaluating the smart city policy through a developing country case study—i.e., Malaysia. This study employed a questionnaire survey method for data collection and analyzed the data by using Fuzzy Delphi analysis. A group of 40 practitioners was gathered in a focus group discussion through purposive sampling. The main objectives of this survey were to identify the understanding and acceptance levels of the seven smart city domains and respective strategies that are outlined in the Malaysian Smart City Framework. The results disclosed that the practitioners possessed divergent levels of understanding and acceptance in terms of smart city domains. The study participant practitioners accepted all understanding and acceptance objectives of smart economy, living, people, and governance domains (expert agreement 75–92% and threshold d value 0.123–0.188), but rejected all objectives for both smart environment and digital infrastructure domains (expert agreement 55–74% and threshold d value 0.150–0.212). Along with this, acceptance of smart mobility was also rejected (expert agreement 56% and threshold d value 0.245). The findings reveal that considering all opinions expressing dissensus is essential when building more inclusive smart city strategies. This study contributes to the smart city discourse as being one of the first in capturing professional practitioners’ understanding and acceptance on a national level smart city policy by applying the Delphi method in the smart city context. Most importantly, the study informs urban policymakers on how to capture the voices and perspectives of the general public on national and local smart city strategy and initiatives.

Keywords: Europe; Fuzzy Delphi method; Hong Kong; India; Malaysia; smart cities; smart city policy; smart urbanization; urban policy; policy evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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