DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2024.2.8| LAI: SMART CITY TRANSITION_ INSIGHTOUT 2(2024) 56 Fig. 8: Limited availability of services as a problem by gender Fig. 10: Average monthly disposable income for travel expenses by gender Fig. 9: Poor customer service as a problem by gender Fig. 11: The most frequent codes related to the word“cost” from the expert interviews ences can be identified in the average monthly dis­posable income. Table 3(Q15) indicates that females have much less monthly budget available for travel expenses than males(see fig. 10). Since most SBMS, especially shared mobility services, require monthly subscriptions, not to mention that the new mobility forms enabled by SBMS generally cost more than those independent of SBMS, 10 the lower disposable income of females may contribute to the reason why females tend to use less SBMS, especially those that require monthly payments. In fact, cost as a concerning factor was also revealed by the interviewees of both expert and in-depth in­terviews. Although it has no significant gendered difference as indicated in table 2(Q7), participant eight(female) from the in-depth interviews explic­itly mentioned“I prefer walking[than using public transport] even if it is at midnight, as it is cheaper […]. Although I am quite scared when walking alone, especially through the tunnel at night”, proving that some individuals might opt to sacrifice their safety in order to avoid paying the extra cost for public trans­port. Using“cost” as a keyword in MAXQDA to per­form code relation analysis on the expert interviews, figure 11 indicates the most frequent related codes concern the disadvantages of smart mobility in Hong Kong and digital service providers. According to sev­eral participants, the cost of shared mobility services is higher than public transport(participant seven, private sector), which is difficult for underprivileged citizens to access(participant eight, civic sector). The same participant postulated that the high oper­ation costs in Hong Kong were being passed on to customers, resulting in the high service costs.