A methodology for assessing supply-demand matching of smart government services from citizens’ perspective: A case study in Nanjing, China

Citizen-centric smart government services (SGS) are booming around the world, which consume a large amount of capital and resources. The supply-demand matching is the goal of developing sustainable SGS supply strategies, but there is a lack of the quantitative model to calculate the matching degree between the objective supply and subjective demand. To fill this gap, this paper sorted out the SGS contents under the existence, related and growth (ERG) framework, and established a SGS supply-demand matching assessment model from citizens' perspective by cosine similarity theory. Citizens in Nanjing were selected to conduct a case study, and the results showed that the overall outcome was in demand exceeding supply, whereas the Existence dimension was in supply matching demand, and the Related and Growth dimensions were in demand exceeding supply. The heterogeneity of the supply-demand matching degrees caused by citizens’ age and usage frequency was confirmed. Finally, the theoretical contributions were extracted and three practical implications were proposed, including adjusting the SGS supply based on regular citizen investigation, increasing the channels for citizens to participate in the whole process of SGS supply, and balancing the heterogeneity of SGS supply and information privacy security. This study not only enriches the theoretical framework of SGS, but also provides guidance for global governments to formulate sustainable SGS supply strategies.