Finding the pioneers of China's smart cities: From the perspective of construction efficiency and construction performance

Existing problems such as waste of resources and lack of public access indicate that sustainable smart city construction should consider the balanced development of construction efficiency and performance. The study adopts the slacks-based measurement (SBM)-DEA model to measure the efficiency of smart city construction, a subsampling technique is adopted as a bootstrapping method, and applies the entropy weight technology to measure the performance of smart city construction. Finally, a model for categorizing the smart city construction is developed using the Boston matrix technique. Results show the following: (a) The smart city development patterns of the 33 prefecture-level cities show gradual improvement during the study period. Seven cities, including Yinchuan, Shenzhen, and Xiamen, are smart city pioneers. (b) Regional differences characterize the level of smart city construction in prefecture-level cities, with the eastern region exhibiting better smart city construction status than the central and western regions. (c) The four municipalities achieve outstanding results in terms of the smart city construction performance. However, apart from Beijing, which is a pioneer in smart city construction, the other three municipalities are not efficient in their construction. Finally, the study proposes policy recommendations for the promotion of the development of different types of smart cities.