Abstract:
The massive scale and increasing complexity of public feedback and service requests have exposed the resource and efficiency constraints of the traditional government-dominated response model, making a shift toward value co-creation increasingly necessary. Although the introduction of digital-intelligent technologies has provided important support for improving the responsiveness and effectiveness of public-feedback services, existing research has not fully explained the micro-level mechanisms through which technological potential is transformed into governance effectiveness. To address this gap, this article examines why digital-intelligent technologies can enable value co-creation. It develops an analytical framework that integrates value co-creation theory with technology affordance theory, and explores how the embedding of technology affects actors' behaviors and inter-actor interactions. Based on a case study of the smart public-feedback platform of the D Municipal Public Security Bureau, the article reaches two main conclusions. First, once digital-intelligent technologies are introduced into public governance settings, they change how different actors perceive technological affordances, thereby triggering the reshaping of actor behavior. Second, on the basis of these reshaped behaviors, new forms of interaction emerge among actors. Through resource integration, cognitive alignment, and process reconfiguration, technological potential is converted into public value. In this sense, the enabling role of digital-intelligent technologies in value co-creation is essentially a process in which changes in affordance perception lead to behavioral adjustment and, subsequently, the reconstruction of inter-actor relations. Therefore, the relationship between digital-intelligent technologies and public service value co-creation should not be understood merely in terms of efficiency improvement. Rather, the introduction of these technologies may reshape actors' judgments about resources, risks, and modes of participation, thereby transforming the conditions under which value co-creation take shape.