Nudging Towards Smart Cities

As smart cities use data and technology to improve citizens’ quality of life in various areas, they also raise ethical and social challenges when employing nudging techniques to subtly and non-coercively influence citizens’ behavior and choices; these practices may shape moral and societal concerns regarding domains such as accountability, paternalism, manipulation, and invasion of privacy. Therefore, it’s crucial to comprehend how citizens perceive and evaluate such practices in light of smart city initiatives and objectives. This study, unlike most other studies that focus on experts or policymakers, offers a novel perspective based on ordinary people’s point of view by examining how citizens may perceive and assess nudging practices in smart cities, and how such practices are influenced by smart governance structures that use digital data flows to improve public decision-making and service delivery. On the social media platform Reddit, such ordinary people’s discourse is examined using a qualitative thematic analysis approach; five subreddits and twenty-five posts were selected using a purposive sampling method as they were deemed pertinent and representative of the research topic. Since no preexisting coding scheme was used, the inductive approach implied that the themes were to be identified and categorized based on the trends that appeared in the gathered data; ultimately, following the data analysis phase of this study, five were the themes that emerged: types of nudges, public opinion, government policing, smart city initiatives and goals, implications and opportunities. These themes assisted in addressing the research questions that were posed and, in addition, the findings demonstrated how nudges cause citizens to express a range of complex and varied opinions and emotions based on their personal experiences, background knowledge, perceptions of advantages and disadvantages, and ethical standards. However, they ultimately suggested nudging practices to be created and put into use in a human-centric manner that respects citizens’ autonomy, privacy, consent, while balancing innovation with regulation, and while also adjusting to the local context and culture that is in line with the general objectives and values of smart city concepts. This study contributes to the existing literature by offering a novel viewpoint on how smart governance should be developed based on ordinary people’s discourses; it also provides recommendations and insights for smart city practitioners and developers who may want to use nudging techniques in a human-centric manner. The findings’ implications for future research on ethically nudging citizens towards safer, healthier, and more sustainable behaviors are discussed, and arguments are made for promoting the need of constantly taking into account and evaluating citizens’ opinions.