# Citizens' Perception of Smart Cities: A Case Study
## 5 Discussion  
Most of the respondents had a high educational level, meaning that most of them are University graduates. Although the Greek respondents appeared to live in places all over Europe, most of them who filled in the questionnaire live in Greece and Cyprus (90.7% in total, combined). Only a total of 22 Greek citizens were inhabitants of other European countries. Thus, for a major part of the review, we considered the number of Greek citizens that live in foreign countries insignificant. Generally, we focused on four city categories: Thessaloniki, Athens, the Rest of Greece, and Paphos. Regarding the \"Smart City\" term, 319 out of 545 participants (58.5%) stated that they have already heard it. The 48.1% (262 out of the total 545) of the Greek participants stated that not only have they heard the \"Smart City\" term before, but they also have a decent (or broader) knowledge of what \"Smart City\" stands for. This is quite encouraging, especially for the citizens of Greece, where there is not a \"pure\" Smart City till today. The conclusions that accrued from the above results show that most of the people who have heard the term are men; thus, gender is a contributory factor for those who have heard the term. Figure 8: Education level for non-familiar citizens  
Overall, the Cypriot citizens in Paphos seem to know better what a \"Smart City\" is than the citizens of Thessaloniki, the Athenians, and those who live in other cities in Greece. When isolating the participants that live in Greece, the Athenians seem to have a broader knowledge of the term than citizens of Thessaloniki and those who live in other cities of Greece, proportionately. This happened because Athens is the capital of Greece and its citizens probably have better information from the local authorities about the Smart City concept. It is also worth mentioning that, according to the survey analysis and results, most of those who have a lower educational level (secondary education and below) tend to be non-familiar with the smart city term, whereas most of those who have a high educational level (\"Higher education\" and above) tend to be more familiar with it, by even just having heard of it. Consequently, the survey's results revealed that most of the participants consider \"Efficient use of energy\" and \"Sustainable development\" as the factors that correlate the most with the smart city concept. Generally, a large number of participants indicated that they do not believe that any efforts have been made in their city in order to become smart. Of those who indeed believe that there has been some action, most of them stated that they had noticed actions in environment and mobility categories. Another conclusion that emerged from the analysis is that citizens in Paphos generally appear to believe that efforts have been made in their city in order to become smart in a proportionally higher percentage than citizens living in Greece. This can be explained by the initiatives taken by the municipality of Paphos recently to offer smart city applications to its citizens. About the most important challenges for the development of a smart city, the survey revealed that the cooperation of the private and public sectors is the biggest of them, according to the participants. The city factor does not appear to be determinant for this result. For the participants that do not appear to be familiar with the smart city term, a number of conclusions also accrue. The fact that almost 90% of the non-familiar participants claimed that they are interested in acquiring further information about Smart Cities in the future is very promising. The age and city factors do not appear to be determinant for this result. Another interesting conclusion is that none of the \"non-familiar with the smart city term\" citizens of both Thessaloniki and Athens thinks that initiatives have been taken for their information about the \"smart city\" concept. A very small number of the citizens that live in other cities in Greece, as well as in Paphos, believes the opposite.