Perceptions of value from smart city Dubai, an expatriate view: a data report

Introduction
The United Nations predicts that by 2050 over 2 billion people will be living in urban areas (United Nations, 2021). This increase is precipitated in large part by the growth of smart cities, these are developments in urban living where transnational networks have emerged as partly denationalized platforms for intertwined global capital and labor mobility and these cities offer international career opportunities and professional and social networks (De Falco, 2019). Smart cities are view by some to be the future of urban living and the UAE and Dubai in particular has focused heavily on smart city development to foster economic growth and make the city an attractive place to live and work (Lima, 2020). Smart cities are often a focus of expatriate talent, and Dubai is no different with approximately 90% of its population being expatriates (Government of Dubai, 2019). The Dubai Government has been very successful in increasing Foreign Direct Investment by acquiring quality international talent (Haak-Saheem, 2020) and quality of life, in which smart cities play a part, is an increasingly important factor in international talent acquisition (Rodríguez-Sánchez et al., 2020) particularly in the UAE (Kokt and Dreyer, 2018).

These cities are enabled by the development in ICT, big data, and AI (Ranchordás, 2020) and enable much greater access and interaction to city services for citizens, while making greater efficiencies through the use of technology. These cities' services encompass a wide range of domains (Giffinger and Gudrun, 2010); economy (covering business competitiveness and entrepreneurial activity), people (looking at social and human capital), governance (covering participation and public engagement), mobility (looking at transport and ICT), environment (around natural resources and sustainability), and finally, living (concerned with quality of life). These six domains form the basis of most definitions of smart cities (Camero and Alba, 2019; Erdogan, 2021). This complexity provides a diverse range of city experiences, which have not fully been examined through the lens of consumer behaviors.

Given the increasing demand for global talent, the apparent rise in smart cities and the complexity of the smart city phenomenon it is becoming increasingly important to understand what is perceived to be valuable to an expatriate to work in a smart city context to ensure the cities are developed in a way that is most fitting for expatriates in this public sector setting.

It is important to remember that value is highly subjective in nature (Holbrook, 2006; Cluley and Radnor, 2020). Value cannot be created in isolation and requires multiple actors to co-create it (traditionally customer and service provider), and furthermore, that value can only be realized through usage (Vargo and Lusch, 2008). It is in that individualistic and context-specific setting that the experience and behavior of smart city users is examined in this data.

Turning to the context of smart cities, while there is much written on the smart cities generally, little has been focused on the value co-creation area in what is a public sector space (Ojasalo and Kauppinen, 2024), nor users' perception of that value (El-Haddadeh et al., 2019). The aforementioned subjective nature of value and the individuals' behavior and experience within that value context also needs further exploration (Eggert et al., 2019). The needs and preferences of users are also under explored (Wirtz et al., 2021) as is the behavioral relationship between individual and service network (Peronard and Ballantyne, 2019). Value creation within smart cities and other public sector areas are increasingly being termed public value, to contrast from the more traditional private sector value creation. Public value is somewhat under researched (Cavallone and Palumbo, 2019; Hansen and Fuglsang, 2020; Yap et al., 2021), partially in relation to ICT (Verma, 2020).

Finally, public value in relation to expatriates; this is a group whose ICT-related behavior and experience have not been fully explored, particularly in relation to the smart city context (Arifa et al., 2021).

The aims of this research are to redress the gaps identified above, firstly to explore value co-creation in smart cities, which is overlooked in the current literature, secondly to examine the behavior of users in a public sector digital environment and finally to add to the current body of knowledge on expatriates' value creation experience.

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