Smart city ranking with subjective indicators

Purpose: The primary purpose of the presented work is to show the impact of the residents’ opinion on the formation of the city's position in the SCR ranking. Another objective was to draw attention to the problem of data shortages in publicly available databases. Design/methodology/approach: The primary database of European countries is the Eurostat database. The research area covered cities with a population of between 200,000 and 800,000, which were not national capitals. Only one city from each country was selected. The proposed SCR covers six areas related to Smart City concept. Two types of meters for each of them are proposed – the first based on objective measures, the second on subjective measures, i.e. the opinions of residents. Each factor was standardised and transformed. The higher the value of the factor, the greater the positive effect on the index. Findings: Cities from the database were identified. General ranking and rankings for both objective and subjective meters were created. The relationship between rankings was investigated, and the impact of subjective variables was shown to be significant. Originality/value: The original method for determining the Smart City index was proposed. It is shown that subjective measures should be included in the rankings. The opinion of the residents should be taken into account when building a ranking regarding Smart City concept.