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such overlapping was prominent between the medium categories
of urban activities and human behavior.
In this study, urban activities were subdivided into life/health,
security/safety, community, education, economy and leisure, and
human behavior was classified into living, working, moving,
playing and cybering. In the human behavior category, living,
playing and working seem similar to life/health, leisure and
economy, respectively, in urban activities. Actually, these
similarities were found in the classification of U-services as well.
In the medium category of “service objectives” with three small
categories (i.e., life support, activity support and industrial
support) thereunder, life support and activity support can be
considered as corresponding to life/health and economy,
respectively, in the urban activities category, and likewise they are
also similar to living and working, respectively, in the human
behavior category. Consequently, there are semantic overlaps not
only between the three medium categories of service objectives,
urban activities and human behavior under the large category of
“functional elements” but between their subcategories as well. A
solution to this overlapping problem is to develop different types
of medium categories or provide small categories directly under
the large category of “functions.” More studies will be needed on
the way to improve the classification of functions by removing
overlaps from small categories [Supplementary table 1].
3.3 Analysis Results
The present study analyzed a U-service typology empirically
through the categorization of U-services. In light of the study
findings, we can assume that Jeong’s U-service typology is high in
exhaustiveness and empirical workability and low in mutual
exclusiveness, parsimony and theoretical fruitfulness.
1) Exhaustiveness: Unlike the previous studies which analyzed
services from a single or two points of view, Jeong attempted
to explain his typology from nine different points of view. In
the process of analyzing 228 unit services, his typology
covered all the services as classified. These facts indicate that
Jeong’s typology is highly exhaustive.
2) Mutual exclusiveness: Even though Jeong’s typology
satisfies the condition of exhaustiveness, it is difficult to say
that it is faithful to the principle of mutual exclusiveness,
because of cases where a single unit service falls under more
than one category simultaneously. Emergency medical
service and U-ski service can be taken as examples of this.
Emergency medical service is to give first aid to a patient
while he/she is being carried in an ambulance, reviewing
patient data with a doctor in hospital. U-ski service helps
users to use ski equipment rentals and lifts conveniently and
provides supports for skiers to monitor their movements and
routes in play and check their achievement records. In this
Table 2. Relevance of Jeong’s classification
3)
study, both of the two services were thought to take not only
a form of life support—for example, making life more
convenient or helping the ambulance crew save a patient’s
life—but also a form of activity support—for example,
helping skiers improve their performance. As a result, they
overlapped between two different areas.
Parsimony: Jeong’s typology consists of 9 medium categories
and 34 small categories. It was a good attempt to try to cover
all possible things on a categorical basis, but his typology is
bad in terms of parsimony because it involves too many
subdivision levels and thus takes a very complicated form.
This low parsimony is also associated with overlaps between
medium categories founded in the empirical analysis. It
should be noted that it is somewhat inevitable to sacrifice
parsimony for comprehensiveness and practicability, but if
any typology does not maintain a certain level of parsimony,
it may end up just enumerating or listing things, not
analyzing them as intended.
4) Empirical workability: This is that operations for
5)
measurement should be possible at acceptable level. Some of
classification criteria were found unclear or ambiguous, but
experts who participated in this study showed consensus in
85.5% of the 228 unit services they categorized using the
present typology. This indicates that the system has high
empirical workability. In general, empirical workability is
low in social science studies as abstract concepts are used,
but Jeong’s typology ensures high empirical workability
because his suggested classification criteria are based on
substantial concepts.
Theoretical fruitfulness: The primary purpose of developing a
classification model is to discover a certain pattern and
regularity from real-world information which appears messed
up, scattered and diverse. In this sense, theoretical
fruitfulness is an important principle for evaluating a
classification model. In view of the current level of
contribution, the U-service typology used in this study seems
limited as it just takes a combination of other typology rather
than advances a new theory. This limitation resulted in a
preponderance of certain categories in the empirical analysis.
For example, in the service classification by urban activities,
the “security/safety” category represented 95% of
transportation services, 100% of crime/disaster prevention
services and 93% of facility management services; and the
“leisure” category included 94% of culture, tourism and
sports services. In short, the services were unevenly
distributed among given categories, like a set of services
entirely belonging to a single category. This indicates that the
present typology failed to play its role properly.
Summarizing all the findings above together, relevance of Jeong’s
typology can be described as shown in Table 3.
Exhaustiveness Mutual exclusiveness Parsimony Empirical workability Theoretical fruitfulness
Suitability + - - + -
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