Real Estate Commons^™

Big Data Approach As An Institutional Innovation To Tackle Hong Kong’S Illegal Subdivided Unit Problem, Yung Yau, Elvis Wai Kin Lau

Faculty of Design & Environment (THEi)

While applications of big data have been extensively studied, discussion is mostly made from the perspectives of computer science, Internet services, and informatics. Alternatively, this article takes the big data approach as an institutional innovation and uses the problem of illegal subdivided units (ISUs) in Hong Kong as a case study. High transaction costs incurred in identification of suspected ISUs and associated enforcement actions lead to a proliferation of ISUs in the city. We posit that the deployment of big data analytics can lower these transaction costs, enabling the government to tackle the problem of illegal accommodations. We propose a …