Contextual factors have been consistently argued as influencing the usefulness of planning support systems (PSS). Whereas previous studies were mostly conducted within a single planning project or based on experimental workshops, the present study looked at the application of PSS in smart city projects worldwide, and investigated the extent to which subjectively measured contextual factors contribute to PSS usefulness in smart cities. Based on a recent international questionnaire (268 respondents) designed to gather the perceptions of scholars and practitioners in the smart city realm, an ordinal regression model was fitted to assess the associations between the argued contextual factors and PSS usefulness. The results show that, in general, four contextual factors—namely the characteristics of the technology itself, user characteristics, characteristics of the planning process, and political context—have a significant influence on the usefulness of PSS, and that their impacts vary significantly. This paper emphasizes that only when PSS users can identify the critical contextual factors that are favorable and unfavorable, will the potential benefits of PSS for spatial planning be fully achieved.

背景因素一直被认为会影响规划支持系统 (PSS) 的有效性。以前的研究大多是在单个规划项目中或基于实验研讨会进行的，而本研究着眼于 PSS 在全球智慧城市项目中的应用，并调查了主观测量的背景因素对智慧城市中 PSS 有用性的贡献程度。根据最近旨在收集智慧城市领域学者和从业者看法的国际问卷（268 名受访者），拟合了有序回归模型来评估争论的背景因素与 PSS 有用性之间的关联。结果表明，总的来说，四个上下文因素——即技术本身的特征、用户特征、规划过程的特征和政治背景——对 PSS 的有用性有显着影响，并且它们的影响差异很大。本文强调，只有当 PSS 用户能够识别有利和不利的关键上下文因素时，才能充分发挥 PSS 对空间规划的潜在好处。