User participation in the Information Systems (IS) user studies has become a popular and widely studied research topic. Understanding of how users should be involved in the projects and how to deal with the various challenges of involving users is important. Keeping users motivated over the time is one of the biggest challenges in the process of user involvement. As the first step of research on how to build a sustained user engagement, the aim of this study is to identify, categorize and sum up existing research on why people drop-out of user studies before the project or activity has ended. The main findings of our study indicate that the performance of the prototype, user selection, user preparation, interaction with the users, privacy concerns and scheduling are highly influential on this issue. Based on the findings, this study also proposes a research agenda to guide future studies in this area.

The concept of “living lab” is a rather new phenomenon that facilitates user involvement in open innovation activities. The users’ motivations to contribute to the living lab activities at the beginning of the project are usually higher than once the activities are underway. However, the literature still lacks an understanding of what actions are necessary to reduce the likelihood of user drop-out throughout the user engagement process. This study aims to explore key factors that are influential on user drop-out in a living lab setting by engaging users to test an innovation during the pilot phase of the application’s development. The stability of the prototype, ease of use, privacy protection, flexibility of the prototype, effects of reminders, and timing issues are the key influential factors on user drop-out behavior. This paper summarizes the key lessons learned from the case study and points to avenues for future research.

The concept of a “living lab” is a relatively new research area and phenomenon that facilitates user engagement in open innovation activities. Studies on living labs show that the users’ motivation to participate in a field test is higher at the beginning of the project than during the rest of the test, and that participants have a tendency to drop out before completing the assigned tasks. However, the literature still lacks theories describing the phenomenon of drop-out within the area of field tests in general and living lab field tests in particular. As the first step in constructing a theoretical discourse, the aims of this study are to present an empirically derived taxonomy for the various factors that influence drop-out behaviour; to provide a definition of “drop-out” in living lab field tests; and to understand the extent to which each of the identified items influence participant drop-out behaviour. To achieve these aims, we first extracted factors influencing drop-out behaviour in the field test from our previous studies on the topic, and then we validated the extracted results across 14 semi-structured interviews with experts in living lab field tests. Our findings show that identified reasons for dropping out can be grouped into three themes: innovation-related, process-related, and participant-related. Each theme consists of three categories with a total of 44 items. In this study, we also propose a unified definition of “drop-out” in living lab field tests.

Involving individual users in the process of information systems development is a key dimension of open innovation. Living Labs are socio-technical systems that facilitate information systems development by integrating technical, social and organizational structures and focusing on individuals, tasks, technologies and the interactions between different stakeholders. Testing digital innovations in real-life use context is one of the key components of Living Labs. The users’ motivations to participate in Living Lab field tests at the beginning of the project are usually higher than once the field tests are underway. However, there is a dearth of research on other issues related to participants’ drop-out in Living Lab field tests. This study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the consequences of drop-out in Living Lab field tests and providing recommendations that would facilitate prolonged user engagement. The paper also discusses some ethical considerations regarding involvement of participants within Living Lab field tests. In doing so, we interviewed fourteen Living Lab experts in two Living Labs in Sweden and Belgium. Based on these interviews, we propose a first set of consequences, recommendations and ethical considerations to take into account when setting up Living Lab field tests. Keywords: User

In today’s ongoing urbanization and escalating climate change, there is an increasing demand on cities to be innovative and inclusive to handle these emerging issues. As an answer to these challenges, and in order to generate and adopt sustainable innovations and nature-based solutions in the urban areas, the concept of urban living labs has emerged. However, to date, there is confusion concerning the concept of the urban living lab and its key components. Some interpret the urban living lab as an approach, others as a single project, and some as a specific place – and some just do not know. In order to unravel this complexity and better understand this concept, we sought to identify the key components of an urban living lab by discussing the perspective of city representatives in the context of an urban living lab project. To achieve this goal, we reviewed previous literature on this topic and carried out two workshops with city representatives, followed by an open-ended questionnaire. In this article, we identify and discuss seven key components of an urban living lab: governance and management structure; financing models; urban context; nature-based solutions; partners and users (including citizens); approach; and ICT and infrastructure. We also offer an empirically derived definition of the urban living lab concept.

The pervasive connectivity of devices enabled by Internet of Things (IoT) technologies is leading the way in various innovative services and applications. This increasing connectivity comes with its own complexity. Thus, large scale pilots (LSPs) are designed to develop, test and use IoT innovations in various domains in conditions very similar to their operational scalable setting. One of the key challenges facing the diffusion of such innovations within the course of an LSP is understanding the conditions in which their respective users decide to adopt them (or not). Accordingly, in this study we explore IoT adoption barriers in four LSPs in Europe from the following domains: smart cities, autonomous driving, wearables and smart agriculture and farming. By applying Roger’s Diffusion of Innovation as a theoretical lens and using empirical data from workshops and expert interviews, we identify a set of common and domain specific adoption barriers. Our results reveal that trust, cost, perceived value, privacy and security are common concerns, yet shape differently across domains. In order to overcome various barriers, the relative advantage or value of using the innovation needs to be clearly communicated and related to the users’ situational use; while this value can be economic in some domains, it is more hedonic in others. LSPs were particularly challenged in applying established strategies to overcome some of those barriers (e.g., co-creation with end-users) due to the immaturity of the technology as well as the scale of pilots. Accordingly, we reflect on the theoretical choice in the discussion as well as the implications of this study on research and practice. We conclude with providing practical recommendations to LSPs and avenues for future research