In the context of intensifying inter-city competition and the full-scale implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), how to measure the sustainability of city brands in a scientifically robust manner and to elucidate the mechanisms thr...
In the context of intensifying inter-city competition and the full-scale implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), how to measure the sustainability of city brands in a scientifically robust manner and to elucidate the mechanisms through which it affects residents’ satisfaction and loyalty has emerged as a key issue for both academia and governance practice. Existing studies have largely focused on external image promotion and tourism attraction, so their evaluation indicators exhibit a clear outward-oriented bias and fail to sufficiently capture the role of internal factors such as social, environmental, and governance dimensions. Although some research has addressed residents’ satisfaction and loyalty, these variables are often treated as secondary and simplified, lacking a systematic theoretical framework and rigorous empirical testing. As a result, the explanatory power regarding the relationship between “city branding and residents’ behaviour” is weakened, and the empirical basis for policy design remains limited. Against this backdrop, the present study aims to construct a sustainable city brand evaluation system that simultaneously incorporates sustainability dimensions and residents’ behavioural mechanisms, and to empirically examine the pathways through which it influences residents’ satisfaction and loyalty.
On this basis, the study concentrates on the construction and empirical validation of evaluation indicators for sustainable city branding. First, through a literature review and expert interviews, and by combining the Delphi technique with the content validity ratio (CVR), the study derives and selects a sustainable city brand evaluation framework comprising four dimensions—economy, society, environment, and governance—10 components, and 31 indicators. In the empirical phase, the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) model is introduced and extended by designating sustainable city brand perceived quality (SPQ) as the core variable and constructing a “sustainable city brand resident satisfaction–loyalty model” based on a survey of residents in Seoul. Using structural equation modelling (SEM), the study tests the causal relationships and mediating mechanisms among perceived quality, perceived value, satisfaction, and loyalty. In addition, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) is employed in parallel to identify multiple configurational pathways leading to high loyalty, and analyses of indicator weights and priorities are conducted to further clarify the differentiated roles of each dimension in the process of building a city brand.
The empirical results show that the sustainable city brand resident satisfaction–loyalty model is supported in the case of Seoul. Sustainable city brand perceived quality (SPQ) indirectly enhances loyalty by increasing perceived value and residents’ satisfaction, with satisfaction performing a key mediating role in this process. The fsQCA further identifies an optimal configuration of “high SPQ + high perceived value + low level of complaints,” confirming that the formation of resident loyalty cannot be attributed to a single factor but is instead the outcome of multiple conditions acting in combination. Moreover, the indicator priority analysis reveals that the economic and environmental dimensions contribute especially strongly to satisfaction and loyalty in the short term, whereas the social and governance dimensions function as structural pillars in the long term, thereby highlighting the multidimensional, cooperative, and mutually complementary characteristics of city brand development.
By constructing and empirically validating a city brand evaluation system that integrates the principles of sustainable development, this study extends the application scope of the ACSI model to the domains of city branding and public management. Based on the findings, city managers are advised to prioritise investments in the economic and environmental sectors while simultaneously enhancing social equity and governance transparency, in order to promote the sustainable development and competitiveness of city brands. Furthermore, as global urbanisation and digitalisation accelerate, the indicator framework proposed in this study can be applied to comparative studies and dynamic monitoring across different types of cities, thereby continuously refining the theoretical model and contributing to the optimisation of city branding policies and practices.