Dynamic assessment of community resilience in China: empirical surveys from three provinces

Strengthening the construction of community resilience and reducing disaster impacts are on the agenda of the Chinese government. The COVID-19 pandemic could alter the existing community resilience. This study aims to explore the dynamic change trends of community resilience in China and analyze the primary influencing factors of community resilience in the context of COVID-19, as well as construct Community Resilience Governance System Framework in China.

A community advancing resilience toolkit (CART) was used to conduct surveys in Guangdong, Sichuan, and Heilongjiang provinces in China in 2015 and 2022, with community resilience data and information on disaster risk awareness and disaster risk reduction behaviors of residents collected. The qualitative (in-depth interview) data from staffs of government agencies and communities (n = 15) were pooled to explore Community Resilience Governance System Framework in China. Descriptive statistics analysis and t-tests were used to investigate the dynamic development of community resilience in China. Hierarchical regression analysis was performed to explore the main influencing factors of residential community resilience with such socio-demographic characteristics as gender and age being controlled.

The results indicate that community resilience in China has improved significantly, presenting differences with statistical significance (p < 0.05). In 2015, connection and caring achieved the highest score, while disaster management achieved the highest score in 2022, with resources and transformative potential ranking the lowest in their scores in both years. Generally, residents presented a high awareness of disaster risks. However, only a small proportion of residents that were surveyed had participated in any "community-organized epidemic prevention and control voluntary services" (34.9%). Analysis shows that core influencing factors of community resilience include: High sensitivity towards major epidemic-related information, particular attention to various kinds of epidemic prevention and control warning messages, participation in epidemic prevention and control voluntary services, and formulation of epidemic response plans. In this study, we have constructed Community Resilience Governance System Framework in China, which included community resilience risk awareness, community resilience governance bodies, community resilience mechanisms and systems.

During the pandemic, community resilience in China underwent significant changes. However, community capital was, is, and will be a weak link to community resilience. It is suggested that multi-stages assessments of dynamic change trends of community resilience should be further performed to analyze acting points and core influencing factors of community resilience establishment at different stages.