Improvements of governmental emergency management capabilities from a configurational perspective under the TOE-PPRR framework

Emergency management capability is critical to the stable development of nations and regions, yet enhancing governments' capability to respond to sudden-onset natural disasters remains a pressing challenge. While prior studies have examined many influencing factors of governments' emergency management capabilities, less attention has been given to their combined effect. In view of this, this paper examines 30 typical natural disaster cases and a dual-dimensional framework is constructed by integrating technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework and prevention-preparation-response-recovery (PPRR) stages. Seven influencing factors are selected as condition variables, namely, emergency prevention and drills, resource allocation, responsiveness, emergency response group, investigations and summaries, monitoring and early warning, and economic level. Moreover, the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method is employed to conduct necessary condition analysis and configuration path analysis. The results show that high emergency management capability cannot be attributed to any single factor; instead, it can be achieved through seven distinct configuration paths. These paths are then categorized into four types: Monitoring and Early Warning-Domination (M1), Pre-Drills-Domination (M2), Resources and Group Collaboration (M3), and Pre-Drills and Early Warning Collaboration (M4). Among factors, emergency prevention and drills, monitoring and early warning, resource allocation, and emergency response group are especially critical. Finally, this paper puts forward corresponding managerial insights for improving governments' emergency management capabilities in combination with specific cases.