Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the effects of successful adoption of information technology (IT)-enabled services to be provided in the proposed smart cities of India from end-user-experience perspective. Design/methodology/approach This paper has taken a sincere endeavor to understand to what extent the success of the smart cities depends on the users' experience of the IT-enabled services, the backbone of smart cities, and how using IT-enabled services can improve the quality of the users' lifestyle. Initially, few hypotheses have been developed from literature review, followed by structured questionnaires. Once the data were collected, they were analyzed using different statistical tools. This paper will be useful for the policymakers, specifically those who are involved in technology and IT-governance-related areas, in policymaking for the proposed smart cities in India. Findings This study tries to find how the IT-enabled services would transform the lives of residents both socially and technologically; to what extent the prospective citizens will be engaged to use the modern services; to what extent the threat of privacy and security issues affects the overall performance of the proposed smart cities of India; and how gaining trust of the citizens could help in successful adoption of IT services. This paper tries to find out few of these questions from the city residents' perspective. Research limitations/implications This study is undertaken keeping Indian smart cities in perspective. However, in India, the proposed smart cities are in different states. In fact, the respondents selected by the authors are not the true representatives of the whole population, which is spread covering all parts of India. This paper could have implications for policymakers in drafting the smart city policy in India especially from IT-governance and user-experience perspective. Practical implications As this study discusses proposed smart cities of India from IT-enabled services and from the citizens' perspective, it will have a huge practical implication once these smart cities become operational in India. Social implications This study discusses the IT-enabled services expected to be provided to the citizens of the proposed smart cities of India. As the paper discusses about the citizens' perspective and the proposed smart cities of India, it definitely has social implications especially since the study is related to the citizens of proposed smart cities of India. Originality/value The research reported in this manuscript is the outcome of in-depth study on proposed Indian smart cities especially from IT adoption and from users' perspective. Very few studies have been carried out on proposed Indian smart cities from IT adoption perspective and how that could improve the lifestyle of the residents.
