What Leads to Effective Emergency Management? A Configurational Analysis of Empirical Cases of Local Chinese Governments

This study investigates the foundational elements that contribute to effective emergency management in urban settings, with a particular focus on experiences from Chinese municipalities. Drawing on resource dependence theory and attention allocation theory, this research develops an analytical framework encompassing four pivotal factors: environmental resources, information sharing, social participation, and leadership attention allocation. Utilizing Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), we examine these factors across sixteen critical incidents of urban accidents and disaster responses in China. Our findings reveal that a high degree of leadership attention allocation is an essential prerequisite for municipal governments to exhibit robust emergency management capabilities during crises. Furthermore, two primary pathways affecting emergency management capacity were identified: the “resource–leadership attention type” and the “social participation–resource coordination type”. These findings contribute to a nuanced understanding of the complexities of emergency management and enlighten the local governments to take some effective measures to enhance emergency management capacities to mitigate disaster losses.