Relations of residents’ knowledge, satisfaction, perceived importance and participation in emergency management: A case study in modern and old urban communities of Ningbo, China

Abstract

The community is the first scene of emergency events, and community residents are the primary responders. Participation of residents is highly important to the emergency management of urban communities, and it can be influenced by residents' attitudes towards both emergency management and the community. In this paper, the emergency management of urban communities is studied by statistical analysis within typical modern and old urban communities in Ningbo, China. Questionnaires were issued to collect residents' demographic characteristics, familiarity with emergency knowledge, perceived importance of emergency management, satisfaction with community management, and participation in emergency activities held by the community. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data and explore the relations among variables. Finally, a series of path clusters involving 11 paths were proposed to explain the relations of residents’ demographics, knowledge, perceived importance, satisfaction, and their participation in emergency management in urban communities. Based on the primary data analysis and path clusters, some policy implications are provided to promote the emergency management participation of residents in urban communities.