Grassroots Mirroring under COVID-19: Does Community Resilience Affect Residents’ Responses? The Case of Shenzhen, China

Abstract

In the face of the sudden outbreak of COVID-19, the community has played a large role in stemming the impact of COVID-19, and community resilience has become a key part of community governance. Community resilience is the ability of a community to respond effectively to risk and keep the community functioning by strengthening governance and leveraging community relationships in the face of external-disaster disruptions; this gives community participants a real sense that the community is equipped to face adversity and challenges. However, the evasive response of some residents is an important factor that hinders the community’s emergency response capabilities. Therefore, this study selected different types of communities in Shenzhen, China, from 9–23 July 2021, conducted a field survey, and obtained 2256 questionnaires using multi-segment random sampling. Based on the questionnaire data, this study uses factor analysis, correlation analysis, multiple linear regression analysis, and cluster analysis to explore the mechanisms of community resilience on residents’ risk coping styles, and the differences between community resilience and residents’ risk coping styles in different types of communities. The study found that, first, community resilience has a significant positive impact on proactive risk response, among which governance performance has a more significant impact; second, community resilience has a negative correlation with evasive coping styles, in which governance performance has a more significant impact; third, there are obvious differences in the level of resilience between different types of communities, with urban communities being the best, mixed communities being second, and transition communities being last. The government’s role in guiding and organizing the population was extremely significant during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the superiority of the socialist system. The role of the community in social management has become increasingly prominent, and community resilience has become a key factor in controlling COVID-19.