The construction of smart villages has begun in many Indonesian villages, along with the advancement of technology and local economic growth. Villagers must participate in constructing the smart economy-smart village by becoming familiar with the characteristics of the village's inhabitants using the citizen science model. This study intends to categorize villagers so that researchers can assess and decide their level of readiness for a smart economy in an ecosystem based on a smart village. Clustering is required to find communities of residents who are ready based on their traits. Using fuzzy C-Means with a Davied Bouldin Index value of 0.129, the data were divided into 4 clusters. The most important variables were chosen using information from the test's 300 responders, and the Kaiser Mayer Olkin assumption of 0.975 was used to validate the results. Our paper provides new information on how smart village readiness is assessed by the citizen science cluster. It was decided to divide residents into four groups: those who are less prepared (24.33%), those who are somewhat prepared (29.33%), those who are ready ( 25.67%) %), those who are ready (level of participatory knowledge), and those who are very ready for the smart economy (20.67%) based on the cluster model.

Indonesia is a country dominated by rural areas. Addressing rural poverty is a priority of the Indonesian government work program and an effort to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). One of the actual programs dealing with poverty is a digital village which is implemented in a smart village ecosystem. Since 2018, Indonesia has initiated various pilots of smart village projects. The success of a smart village is closely related to citizen science. The purpose of this research was to build a citizen science prospect model for a smart economy in a smart village ecosystem using Structural Equation Model – Partial Least Square (SEM-PLS) approach. This study proposes a novelty of measuring villagers' readiness to build a smart economy in a smart village ecosystem based on the strength of community support. We propose an assessment of the prospect of developing a smart economy in a smart village through the citizen science level that integrates exogenous variables of community support for the environment, citizen character, empowerment, entrepreneurship, innovation, and the smart economy. The citizen science model towards a smart economy showed a high level of predictive relevance, which was 87,2%. The citizen science model towards a smart economy can also explain empirical data with a GoF value of 0,488. This research showed that the indicators of Information Communication Technology (ICT), ICT literacy, access to education and research and development (R & D) facilitation, motivation for smart villages, and innovation in villages were driven by family participation. The collaboration with the private sector, local government, and communities drive the village's smart economy. The SEM PLS approach has not been widely used in research on the smart village component, especially the relationship between citizen science and the smart economy. Therefore, this research can fill the gap in smart village research, which is still dominated by a descriptive approach.