Natural disasters have obvious cross-regional and compound characteristics. Cross-regional emergency cooperation for natural disasters deepens the diversification of coordination relations and the complexity of interaction modes among emergency response organizations, including horizontal and vertical organizational interactions. In order to clarify the cooperation mechanism of emergency organizations during cross-regional emergency cooperation for natural disasters and to explore the key factors that affect the cooperative relationships of emergency organizations, in this study, a game model is constructed based on evolutionary game theory, which is composed of local, neighboring, and central governments. Then, the stability of the emergency game strategy is analyzed. On this basis, a numerical simulation is used to simulate the dynamic evolution trajectory of the game system. The results show that there is an embedded mutual promotion mechanism that evolves towards a positive emergency strategy combination among the game subjects. The selection strategies of the game subjects show the characteristics of consistency and the following: enhanced cooperation efficiency between local and neighboring governments, emergency capital stock, and shared resources, therefore, guiding social emergency forces to actively participate in emergency operations. Strengthening the emergency dispatching strength of the central government and the effectiveness of central–local emergency dispatching, can support the performance of cross-regional emergency cooperation for natural disasters. Furthermore, the efficiency of cooperation between local and neighboring governments will be enhanced.

Effective warnings are important for preventing the spread of disease during the early stages of outbreaks. Social media serves as a valuable platform for disseminating warning messages. The success of warnings issued through government social media accounts (GSMAs) depends on citizen engagement. However, an incomplete understanding of the relationship between warning messages and audience responses has hindered the design of crisis communication strategies. We investigated the factors affecting citizen engagement with warnings on GSMAs during public health crises. Drawing on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) and the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) framework, model was developed to analyze the effects of central routes (content features) and peripheral routes (microstructural and source features) on citizen engagement, as well as the moderating effect of disease type. Data were collected from 38 Sina Weibo accounts of government agencies in China during two public health crises: COVID-19 and H1N1. Logit regression analysis was conducted to test the hypothesized relationships. The results indicate that (1) positive emotional tendencies and more warning elements are associated with citizen engagement; (2) the relationship between message length and citizen engagement follows an inverted U-shape; (3) media richness and information style variety significantly enhance citizen engagement; and (4) disease type (emerging vs. reemerging infectious diseases) moderates the relationships between media richness, information style variety, source influence, and citizen engagement. Given that issuing warnings is critical to emergency management, our findings provide significant theoretical and practical insights, particularly for improving early government-public communication through social media platforms. Not applicable.

Social organizations have become an important component of the emergency management system by virtue of their heterogeneous resource advantages. It is of great significance to explore the interaction between the local government and social organizations and to clarify the key factors affecting the participation of social organizations in natural hazard emergency responses. With the aim of exploring the relationship between the local government and social organizations, based on evolutionary game theory, the emergency incentive game model and the emergency linkage game model of natural hazard emergency responses were constructed. The evolutionary trajectories of the emergency incentive game system and the emergency linkage game system were described by numerical simulation. Meanwhile, the influence mechanism of government decision parameters on the strategy selection of both game subjects was analyzed. The results show that both governmental incentive strategy and linkage strategy can significantly improve the enthusiasm of social organizations for participating in natural hazard emergency responses. Moreover, they could encourage social organizations to choose a positive participation strategy. Nevertheless, over-reliance on incentives reduces the probability of the local government choosing a positive emergency strategy. In addition, we found that, when both game subjects tend to choose a positive strategy, the strategy selection of the local government drives that of social organizations.

Vaccination is the key to interrupting the transmission of viruses, reducing public health losses, and improving the efficiency of public health emergency management. The implementation of vaccination requires communication between the government and the public, and the participation of multiple subjects. Strengthening the coordination of multiple subjects in the process of vaccination can improve the vaccination rate and broaden its scope. Therefore, from the perspective of inter-organizational interaction, a public health emergency vaccination game model based on health management departments, vaccinologists, and the public was constructed in this study. With the objective of improving the effectiveness of vaccination, the influential factors in a public health emergency vaccination game system and game subjects’ strategy selection were explored using a numerical simulation analysis. The research results showed that the range of vaccination, the diversification of vaccination information release, the level of emergency coordination between health management departments and vaccinologists, and the public’s awareness of emergency protection can all effectively promote vaccination. Among them, the effects of vaccination range (δ) and the diversification of vaccination information release (φ) on game subjects’ strategy selection fluctuated, but did not affect the overall trend. Both the level of emergency collaboration (θ) and public safety awareness (ε) can enhance the initiative of game subjects to participate in vaccination. When the stable strategy combination formed by the game system are positive promotion strategy, active guidance strategy and active vaccination strategy, the convergence rate of health management departments and vaccinologists to form a stable strategy is greater than that of the public. Further, the implications of promoting the effective implementation of vaccination are put forward via improving the vaccination strategy, strengthening vaccination collaboration, mobilizing the enthusiasm of vaccinologists, and enhancing the initiative of the public.