THEMING IN SMART VILLAGES CONTEXT

The paper discusses the possibility of smart thematic village development and presents the results of qualitative research aimed at determining why some smart thematic villages are developing while others are not. The grounded theory approach was used for semi-structured interviews. This empirical study investigates four thematic villages in Lithuania, which have an official status and are currently operating and one non-developing thematic village. The structured grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, Corbin & Strauss, 2015) was employed to analyse the collected data using open, axial and selective coding techniques. The grounded theory of the thematic village development was built around the core category (a critical success factor of the development of a smart thematic village), i.e. weighed involvement of thematic village actors in thematic village activities context. The main condition of thematic village development is context for thematic village actors weighed involvement. This is context for theming, digital solutions to facilitate collaboration, communication, accessibility and problem-solving at various levels in the thematic village. Thematic village actors get involved in thematic village activities only when they have specific context – Global, National, Local institutional, Village Community and Individual. The more favorable the context, the more weighted involvement is and the more benefits thematic village actors and other stakeholders get, the more possibilities they create for sustainable smart thematic village development.