Configurational pathways to smart city AI adoption: Evidence from local governments in Australia, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and the United States

Despite increasing policy attention and technological progress, AI adoption in smart city governance and local governments remains uneven. While previous studies have identified individual drivers of adoption, limited research has examined how multiple factors interact to enable or constrain implementation. Drawing on the technology-community-policy framework, this study employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to investigate configurational pathways leading to AI-enabled smart city adoption across eleven local governments in five countries, Australia, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and the United States. The findings reveal three different equifinal configurations leading to high AI adoption. First, the technology-driven pathway shows that robust smart city infrastructure and data capability can offset limited regulatory preparedness. Second, the balanced pathway integrates technological readiness, policy awareness, and organisational attention to community considerations to support adoption holistically. Third, the policy-driven pathway demonstrates that strong institutional mandates can compensate for weaker technical capacity. Across all pathways, perceived implementation constraints emerge as a core enabling condition, suggesting that recognition of challenges can stimulate proactive adoption strategies. The findings highlight substitutability between technological and policy dimensions, offering strategic flexibility for municipalities with differing resource endowments. This study advances configurational thinking in smart city and public sector innovation research and provides actionable insights for context-sensitive, resource-appropriate AI governance in local governments. • Identifies multiple configurational pathways enabling AI adoption across diverse local governments. • Reveals technology, policy, and balanced driven routes achieving comparable AI implementation. • Demonstrates substitutability between technological readiness and policy capacity in AI adoption. • Discloses recognition of implementation constraints as a key enabler of proactive urban AI adoption. • Offers context-sensitive, resource-appropriate insights for advancing local government AI governance.