Smart Parking schemes cannot succeed without the engagement and support of the drivers who may benefit from their use. This study investigates engagement with a Smart Parking service in the London Borough of Westminster. Factors likely to influence the use of Smart Parking services were identified from a literature review and incorporated into an explanatory model comprising 9 factors connected by 16 hypotheses. To test the model, residents of Westminster and visitors to the area were surveyed, resulting in a total of 212 valid responses. The responses were used to test a structural equation model, using confirmatory factor analysis. The results of the analysis indicated that Awareness of the scheme; Perceived Ease of Use; Perceived Usefulness; Cost saving; Perceived Privacy and Perceived Security all had a direct impact on Usage, with Awareness being the most influential factor. The results also highlighted the fact that, despite efforts by Westminster Council to publicise the scheme, 74% of respondents had little awareness of it, suggesting the need for improved publicity.

Aligned with the global trend of smartness, China has invested heavily in over 700 smart city projects across over 500 cities. Hundreds of smart city apps, initiated by local authorities, have so emerged in the daily lives of Chinese citizens, but anecdotal evidence showed that these official apps have many problems and deficiencies. This study captures a snapshot of current development and problems of official smart city apps in China. A total of 333 such apps, together with 15754 comments, were collected, reviewed and analyzed. The results showed that China’s smart city apps fall into three application areas, i.e. smart transportation, smart healthcare, and smart livelihood, of which each provides some promising features and services. However, a range of functional, interface, design, usage and service-related problems were found in these apps. This paper concluded that further to the very efforts on infrastructure and hardware, local authorities in China and worldwide need to pay more attention to smart apps, in order to maximize potential return of their smart city investments.

This study aimed to explore factors affecting continual usage of one-stop smart urban apps, which is the key to realise the vision of smart cities. A questionnaire (involved a total of 578 users/citizens) was carried out to test the research model, which was established based on existing user behavioural theories and recent literature on smart cities. The results, derived from confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling, confirmed that lower costs (measured by cognitive effort and perceived risks), as well as higher “smartness” (measured by output usefulness, output velocity, and the quality of offline services), would lead to better user satisfaction. Moreover, system quality has indirect influence on user satisfaction (i.e. citizens only feel dissatisfied when system pitfalls affect output usefulness and output velocity of smart urban apps), which together with social influence will determine citizens’ continuance usage intention of smart urban apps.