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The purpose of this paper is to explore the reaction of Pakistani citizens toward online privacy in the context of the Pakistan Government's COVID-19 app privacy breach.

The authors implemented supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods, that is, topic modeling and sentiment analysis on Google app store user review data.

There was no visible concern shown by the citizens toward the COVID-19 app privacy breach, even though it was well highlighted in the news. Other studies have also indicated that concern for online privacy remains low in developing countries, which aligns with the findings of this paper.

Globally COVID-19 apps have been a cause of concern in terms of public privacy. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first in the Pakistani context to show the impact of a well-document privacy breach of a government COVID-19 app.

The purpose of this paper is to provide answers regarding the factors that motivate or discourage the quadruple helix (QH) stakeholders and the wider public in citizen science (CS) activities. The research reveals a current overview of the perceptions, attitudes, concerns and motivation with regard to development of CS ecosystem in four countries: Greece, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Spain.

The researchers deploy a mixed methodology, entailing an in-depth literature review and a large-scale quantitative survey (approximately 2,000 citizens) targeting QH stakeholders and general public from the local national ecosystems. The results contain both descriptive statistics and statistical analysis per country. After the comprehensive overview of drivers and barriers regarding the participation in CS activities in general, the focus is narrowed down on the engagement motivation of different QH stakeholders and the differences in enabling/hindering factors at the local ecosystems.

Depending on the country and the pre-existing level of CS maturity, the results provide a complicated network of factors that unlock or block participation in CS activities. These factors include, to name a few, political maturity, civic engagement, technological infrastructures, economic growth, culture of stakeholder collaboration, psychological stimulus and surplus of resources. The implications of the findings necessitate the alignment of the envisioned CS ecosystem with the local dynamics in each country.

The quantitative nature of the survey method, limited sample size and only four countries context are noted as limitations of the study and offer future research potential for longitudinal settings and mixed-methods studies.

The results contribute to the wider literature on CS that focuses on perspectives, possibilities and differences in local contexts with respect to the public engagement by developing CS ecosystem. At the same time, its added value lies in the overall practical proposition, and how the latter can effectively and efficiently attract and retain different stakeholder groups and citizens, under a collaborative approach.

The smart sustainable cities (SSC) concept has a wide acknowledgement amongst governments and societies that deal with emerging technology and help in developing better urban communities. However, the fact that citizens' participation (CP) is not adherent to the current policies and governance often boosts their aspirations of decision-making to become smart cities. This paper aims to identify SSC variables and, more importantly, rank, categorise and discuss the factors towards implementing SSC by engaging, empowering and enabling citizens to participate in the urban development of SSC.

A comprehensive literature review identified 38 factors in the CP process. Those factors were used to design an online questionnaire administered to the respondents. A total of 164 valid responses were collected. A two-stage statistical analysis was adopted. First, the Relative Importance Index (RII) was used to rank and prioritise the importance of the factors that affect the current policies and agenda. Second, factor analysis was utilised to categorise and group those factors.

This study founds four significant factors that help in implanting SSC: “knowledge of smart sustainable cities”, “awareness of smart sustainable cities”, “willingness of the citizens to participate” and “opinion on the current agenda of the government's role”.

This study has a few limitations which can be considered in future studies. First, the response rate of the participant is relatively low (163), so sampling a larger segment will support the broader perception of the citizens.

The outcome of this paper underlines the need for the successful implementation of smart cities by adopting CP in the process of impacting policies and governance. Particularly, it identifies factors that help cities and policymakers in engaging CP in developing new policies and revising existing policies for promoting SSC.

There is a need to investigate the most critical factors that influence CP for implementing SSC. These factors have not been adequately examined in extant literature.

This study investigates the factors that influence citizens trust in public leaders [i.e. presidents, members of parliament (MPs) and local government leaders (LGs)] in 34 countries in Africa between 2019 and 2021.

Individual-level data with a sample size of 48,084 was obtained from the Afro-Barometer round 8 survey only and analyzed using multivariate binary logistic regression.

Several important and intriguing observations were made from this analysis: (1) the performance of public leaders influences citizens trust in their leaders; (2) the perceived corruption of public leaders and civil servants and the level of corruption influence citizens trust in public leaders; (3) perceived neighborhood problems (i.e. fear of violence, fear of terrorism and service delivery) influence citizens trust in their public leaders and (4) the socio-demographic characteristics of citizens (i.e. age, religion, education, location, employment and political party affiliation) influence citizens trust in their public leaders.

This study is exceptional in two ways: (1) it examines and compares citizens trust in public leaders across different levels, i.e. presidents, MPs and LGs in Africa and (2) it examines and compares the factors influencing citizens trust in public leaders in Africa comparatively.

The current body of empirical research regarding the impact of trust in the cybersecurity commitment of institutions on digital payment usage has focused solely on a macro-level analysis, overlooking the intricate dynamics between institutions' cybersecurity commitments and the trust levels of digital payment users. In light of this limitation, this study aims to offer a more comprehensive understanding of this complex relationship.

A case study was conducted on digital payment users in India through the critical realist lens. To gather data, interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with digital payment users from various regions of the country.

The citizen-centric outcomes of the national cybersecurity commitment (performance and responsiveness) are the most prominent and impactful trust indicators. These outcomes play a crucial role in shaping digital payment users' perception and trust in the cybersecurity commitment of public institutions. Individuals' value positions also influence trust judgments, as it is essential to recognize the value tensions that may arise due to security implementation and their congruence with citizens' values.

The findings of this study have significant implications for policymakers. They are potentially an artifact of the security and perception of digital payment users and the cultural uniqueness of digital payment users in India.

The study proposes a holistic understanding of the relationship between institutions' cybersecurity commitments and the trust levels of digital payment users. It offers a qualitative evaluation of how digital payment users perceive and construe efficient information security management implemented by public institutions.

The library and information science profession finds itself grappling with substantial difficulties and hurdles when addressing the trustworthiness and accuracy of information disseminated through social media platforms. This study aims to highlight the educational authority of librarians and propose a framework for librarians to establish their identity, understand the meaning behind their practice and integrate their expertise through knowledge practices, ensuring their relevance and effectiveness in the social media environment.

This study delves into a conceptual framework rooted in philosophical inquiry, seeking to establish a harmonious connection between interrelated concepts of civic roles, professional identity and knowledge practices. It draws upon both original research findings and a review of existing literature in the field.

Civic responsibilities reflect the professional identities of librarians. Evidence of knowledge practices collected from scientific literature emerged to be the important characterization of how librarians uphold their image as educational authorities. It describes the meaning of civic roles and professional practice.

The study sheds light on how librarians maintain their reputation as educators and the knowledge practices that underpin their civic responsibilities amidst the pervasiveness of information disorders.

The framework presented in the study offers a timely and relevant contribution to the complex realm of social media information disorders, a challenge that librarians grapple with regularly. It highlights the emerging role of librarians in society to assert their identity and recognize their civic responsibility in addressing this pressing issue that society faces.

This study aims to empirically examine the relationship between Internet use and personal privacy risk perceptions, the mediating effect of trust and the moderating effect of satisfaction on that relationship, which is exactly conducive to the practice of personal information protection.

A moderated mediation model will be employed to test the hypothesized relationships using the 2017 Chinese Society Survey data.

The authors find that Internet use positively relates to citizens' risk perceptions toward privacy security, and trust partially mediates the relationship between Internet use and privacy risk perception. In addition, the analysis of moderating effects showed that satisfaction with social life significantly enhances the negative impact on individuals' privacy risk perceptions of interpersonal trust. The positively moderating effect of satisfaction with local governments' work mainly reveals the relationship between interpersonal trust (or institutional trust) and citizens' privacy risk perception. Moreover, satisfaction with Internet platforms positively moderates the relationship between consumer trust and privacy risk perception.

This article contributes to the social risk amplification framework by applying it to the personal privacy information protection field, which was rarely discussed before. It also enriches privacy research by identifying the internal mechanism of how Internet use influences citizens' risk perceptions towards privacy information leakage.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate user satisfaction with digital health solutions by identifying and prioritizing different service attributes on the basis of their impact on improving user satisfaction.

Through a literature review and interviews with health professionals and patients, 20 attributes of digital health services provided in Italy have been identified. User satisfaction with these attributes has been evaluated by adopting the Kano model’s continuous and discrete analyses.

The findings reveal the essential attributes of digital health services that meet users' expectations, identify the attributes that users appreciate or dislike having and highlight unexpected attributes that lead to a significant boost in satisfaction when provided.

This study demonstrates the efficacy of the Kano model in assessing the nonlinear correlation between user satisfaction and the quality of digital health services, thus contributing to fill a gap in the literature in this area. The main limitation of this work is the use of a non-probabilistic sampling method.

This research suggests healthcare institutions and organizations consider user preferences when designing digital health solutions to increase their satisfaction. The results indicate different effects on user satisfaction and dissatisfaction for different categories of attributes in the Italian context.

Previous works studied customer satisfaction with digital health, assuming a linear relationship with service quality, or investigated consumer adoption intentions focusing on the technological factors. This work advances available knowledge by analyzing the nonlinear relationship between digital health attributes and users’ satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

This paper explores the different open science policy effects on the knowledge generation process of researchers in basic sciences: biology, chemistry and physics.

This paper uses a qualitative methodology with a content analysis approach. It uses seventeen semi-directed interviews.

The main perceived effect of open science is access to research inputs, with open access, open research data and code reuse as primary sources. Another issue is the increase of collaboration with other colleagues in terms of the ability to collaborate faster and encouraging the exchange of ideas. However, this benefit does not translate to the division of labor in large transnational teams. Time spent on tasks like cleaning up data and code, scooping and other ethical issues are unfavorable aspects noted.

Policymakers could use this study to enhance current open science policies in the countries.

This study analyzes the perspectives of basic sciences researchers from two countries about open science policies. The main conclusion is the fact that open science policies should focus on the research process itself – rather than research outputs – in order to effectively tackle inequalities in science.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-03-2023-0135

This study evaluates the effect of transparency measures on public procurement efficiency, focusing on Thailand’s Infrastructure Transparency Initiative (CoST). This study aims to understand its impact on the country’s public infrastructure procurement practices.

This paper analyses Thailand’s government construction procurement data, focusing on budgetary savings and CoST process participation. Budgetary savings are this study dependent variable, while the main intervention variable is the adoption of the CoST data disclosure standard. This study uses multiple linear regression, fixed-effects model and propensity score matching with the logit model for a comprehensive analysis.

This study shows that using the CoST data disclosure leads to notable budget savings in Thai public construction procurement. With CoST’s introduction, the savings rose by Baht 9.6m, and even with added controls, the savings remained significant at around Baht 3.3m. The savings consistently stay near 5% across different models. The propensity score matching method confirms these results, consistent with factors such as open bidding and agency categorisation.

This study might not capture all benefits, especially non-financial ones. Thailand’s unique context and potential biases in data sources also need consideration.

CoST evidence backs Thailand’s procurement transparency. This study recommends broadening CoST, streamlining online platforms and promoting digital public engagement. Training stakeholders and partnering with state-owned enterprises and local agencies is vital to align with CoST and mitigate risks.

This study shows a clear link between transparency from information disclosure and budget efficiency in public procurement, using data from Thailand. It highlights the potential of transparency measures in developing countries.