Understanding the Co‐Provision of Disaster‐Related Services in the United States: Universities and Colleges as Community Stakeholders

A “whole community” strategy is central to disaster management and community resilience in the United States. However, the specific means by which community‐level stakeholders in the private and nonprofit sectors function as partners with government agencies in providing key disaster‐related services are currently underexamined. Here, we present unique data assessing one significant community stakeholder category: US universities and colleges. Doing so presents a useful opportunity to examine how disaster service co‐provision functions in practice. Elaborating on prior theory in this area and using a public service logic perspective, we examine emergency preparedness and response and find, intuitively, factors such as internal organizational capacity help explain co‐provision actions. However, we also demonstrate the importance of other domain characteristics. For instance, administrators' sense of community responsibility affects service co‐provision management. Further, organizational behavior related to routine local hazard issues is not necessarily predictive of atypical cases—such as pandemic‐related actions.