Effects of China’s Community Gridding on Coproduced Reporting of Rainstorm-Induced Emergencies: A Community-Wide Analysis

Abstract Presently, the involvement of citizens in emergency management is inevitable and indispensable, but how to facilitate the participation of citizens remains unclear. Utilizing panel data from 174 communities in China between 2013 and 2023, this study investigated the effects of the community gridding policy (an important policy for facilitating citizen participation in public services in China) on citizens’ coproduced reporting of rainstorm-induced emergencies (e.g., small-scale debris flow, water inundation, and trapped citizens) by integrating propensity score matching (PSM) and difference-in-differences (DID) methods. Statistical results showed that the community gridding significantly enhanced both citizens’ reporting engagement (represented by the number of citizen reports) and reporting quality (represented by the ratio of the reports that have been accepted by communities to the total received reports). Mediating effect analysis showed that community gridding policy enhanced citizen reporting by increasing the capability of citizen training, reporting rule completeness, and technological maturity. In addition, the effects of community gridding on enhancing citizen reporting strengthened with the increase of the community scale. Furthermore, high risk perception increased the impact of community gridding on citizen reporting. The findings contribute to both the literature on and practice of emergency service coproduction and rainstorm disaster risk reduction. Moreover, those findings provide guidance of improving citizen participation for the jurisdictions that have similar rainstorm risk situations as China.