It seems that the smart cities concept is confidently becoming one of the highly exposed current challenges. Undoubtedly, it brings a lot of interest and excitement both among academia and professional researchers since it presents a futuristic project with many intriguing features that will influence the quality of life. The technological aspects of smart cities are quite well researched, while an important issue remains with the acceptance of the technology among individuals. Participation in the projects seems to be one possible solution when it comes to the wider acceptance of the services offered within the smart city. Scholars have already examined different aspects of the participation in smart cities, however, no one has explored and quantified the impact participation would have on overcoming the issues and concerns people feel towards smart cities.Thus, the main focus of our research is not only to highlight the participation as a possible solution in overcoming well-known issues but also to measure and examine to what extent the participation is a viable solution in terms of changing people’s perspective and attitude towards smart cities, towards services provided in the smart city and towards smart city development. The purpose of our research is, therefore, to examine the actual impact participation has on the perceived issues that are related to smart cities. Using an online questionnaire, we empirically tested the research topic on more than 500 individuals in different countries.