When Technology Meets Culture: Digital Co-Production and Public Value Creation

Digital technologies are widely assumed to democratize citizen participation, yet their actual effects on co-production remain theoretically underspecified. This study examines how digital technologies shape co-production through a qualitative analysis of Taiwan’s Street Doctor Improvement Program—a national-level digital co-production initiative for pedestrian safety. The findings challenge prevailing assumptions in the digital governance literature and lead to three theoretical modifications. First, digital platforms exhibit a dual nature—empowering citizens through lowered participation barriers while enabling governmental control through agenda-setting and data ownership. Second, effective digital co-production depends on dynamic institutional work; Taiwan’s full government funding mechanism and citizen voting system demonstrate how policy actors innovate beyond existing institutional constraints. Third, public value creation proves culturally contextualized rather than universal; participation took the form of organized platform appropriation, as neighborhood representatives and other organized actors mobilized and contested it in ways that challenge individual-centered accounts of digital co-production. By integrating co-production theory, public service ecosystem perspectives, and institutional work concepts, this study advances digital governance scholarship beyond single-level analyses toward a multi-actor, multi-level framework. The findings offer practical guidance for designing culturally sensitive digital governance and inform the debate over whether digital participation creates genuine public value or merely symbolic inclusion.