Why Does a Smart City Need Feedback? - Analyzing Big Data on Citizen Opinion -

This study introduces a novel approach to analyzing informal opinions of city residents to provide a plan that would respond to their needs. By analyzing 567,230 civic queries from 2007 to 2016 on the civic participation platform of the smart city of Namyangju, Korea, this study investigates sustainable development in a city to enable a citizen-centric plan to implement a smart city that satisfies the demands of the residents. By examining long-tail phenomena in big data on civil opinions collected through telephone and the internet, this research specifies citizen demand. Using an econometric demand-forecasting approach, it provides scientific evidence for policies to meet citizens’ demands. The empirical results show that internet-based technologies increase the variety of civil participation, thereby creating a longer tail and producing a lower Gini coefficient in the distribution of policy demands.