PEOPLE'S PARTICIPATION IN DEVELOPING THE CAPITAL CITY OF LUANG PRABANG TOWARD A SMART CITY

Abstract

The research aims to 1) investigate the people's knowledge and understanding of the development of Luang Prabang as a smart city and 2) investigate the external environmental factors that influence people's involvement in the transformation of Luang Prabang into a smart city. The study's sample group comprises 153 indigenous individuals from the Xiengthong, Wat That, Visoun, and Mano groups residing in the World Heritage Area. We utilized a questionnaire to gather data and statistics, including frequency, percentage, average value, and standard deviation. We then analyzed the survey data using multiple regression equations. The research findings revealed that the study examined the knowledge and understanding of Luang Prabang's development as a smart city among 293 residents of the World Heritage area. Overall, the level of knowledge about Luang Prabang's development as a smart city is high, accounting for 50.33%. This is followed by an intermediate level of knowledge-understanding at 28.10%, and a low level of knowledge-understanding at 21.57%. 2) The level of external environmental factors, with an average value of 3.95 and a standard deviation of 0.69, significantly influences participation in the development of Luang Prabang capital towards a smart city, with a mean value of 3.62 and a standard deviation of 0.88. Two external environmental factors, namely social and regulatory-legal factors, significantly influence people's participation in the development of Luang Prabang capital towards a Smart City, showing a positive correlation at a statistical significance level of 0.05. As for political factors, economic factors, technological factors, and natural environment factors, there is no effect on participation in the development of Luang Prabang capital to become a smart city at a statistical significance level of 0.05.