Analysis of the Involution Community Management in Emergency

Public Health Event based on an Evaluation Index Establishment and

Experimental Date Processing

Yicheng Peng

and Yue Hu

School of Politics and Public Administration, Soochow University, Xinghu street, Suzhou, China

School of Politics and Public Administration, Soochow University, Suzhou, China

Keywords: Involution, Index System, AHP, Public Health Emergencies, Emergency Management, Community

Governance.

Abstract: Though investigating the process of emergency prevention and control of public health emergencies in

community C of city R, province G during COVID-19 in 2020, the article overviews emergency management

in community C of city R, province G. The article identifies key elements in emergency government and

combines related elements to build an index system to evaluate the rationality and effectiveness of emergency

management in community C based on analytic hierarchy process. The article then collects data through

questionnaires in Likert 5-point scale from residents and conduct data processing in Spss software

to analyse

the emergency government. Through systematic evaluation and analysis, the article points out the existence

of involution of emergency management in the community governance caused by a combination of regular

management vulnerability and pressure for pandemic prevention and control.

1 INTRODUCTION

After the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia

epidemic, Community C, City R, G Province worked

overtime to ensure pandemic prevention and control

work. However, trapped by the poor local

development situation, imperfect governance system,

and the tight schedule of the epidemic prevention and

control task, the community’s good anti-epidemic

effect is based on high load, high pressure, high cost,

and low efficiency. On the surface, although it has a

certain effect, it is actually a kind of undeveloped

growth, that is, it has fallen into the predicament of

the involution of emergency management in the

prevention and control of public health emergencies.

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2 RESEARCH REVIEW

2.1 Involution

"Involution" refers to the process in which an

organization is constrained by external expansion

conditions, but has neither mutational nor incremental

growth, and the internal system continues to become

more complex. The direct consequence is

organizational decline or organizational

ineffectiveness. The "involution" of an organization's

governance often manifests itself in the form of a high

pressure on the organization's staff due to the fine

structure and functional stability (Liu, Qiu 2004).

164

Peng, Y. and Hu, Y.

Analysis of the Involution Community Management in Emergency Public Health Event based on a Evaluation Index Establishment and Experimental Date Processing.

DOI: 10.5220/0011344500003437

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Public Management and Big Data Analysis (PMBDA 2021), pages 164-169

ISBN: 978-989-758-589-0

3 MATERIALS AND METHODS

3.1 Sources of Materials

The purpose of this paper is to explore the dilemma

of involution of community emergency management

under public safety emergencies by taking the

practice of emergency management in Community C

as a cut-off point. In order to gain insight into the

situation of community C’s epidemic prevention and

control work, this paper, on the one hand, based on

volunteer practice, records and analyzes the

community C's pandemic prevention and control

work from December 2019 to May 2020 in R city, G

province, and conducts semi-structured interviews

with community workers.

3.2 Assessment of Emergency

Management of Community C

3.2.1 Study Assumptions

As far as this study is concerned, the target is the

community residents, so the residents can be regarded

as the "customers" of the community for epidemic

prevention and control, and satisfaction is the attitude

and psychological experience of the customers who

are satisfied with all aspects of the service after

comparing the gap between the actual value and

demand or expectation according to the cognitive

evaluation of the community epidemic prevention

and control. Thus, we can evaluate the

implementation effect of community outbreak

prevention and control services from the perspective

of customer satisfaction. The level of resident

satisfaction directly affects the effectiveness of

epidemic prevention and control. High-quality

community epidemic prevention and control services

can achieve a reasonable allocation of limited

resources, improve the efficiency of resource

utilization, and maximize the effect of epidemic

prevention and control. In this paper, the CSI method

is used to evaluate the fullness of farmers' policies,

but two assumptions need to be determined.

a) Community outbreak prevention and control

services are felt and perceived by residents (Wang,

Luo 2010).

b) Residents are free to express their judgment in

their entirety. That is, strategic behavior has less

impact on the CSI approach (in line with the

Brookshire fascite) through proper design of the

problem. It is also said that the resident's answers to

each question are consistent with the cumulative

normal distribution function.

3.2.2 Model Selection

An important objective of the resident satisfaction

survey is to measure the current level of satisfaction

of the rural residents. This article is rated using the

Likert 5-point scale and calculated using arithmetic

weighted average (Liu 2004):



i 1

XWCSI

(1)

CSI in the formula: customer (residents)

satisfaction index;

Weight of the first measurement indicator;

: Customer (Residents) evaluation of the ith

satisfaction indicator.

3.2.3 Weight Design of Indicators under

Analytic Hierarchy Process

According to customer satisfaction, emergency

management and other related theories, from the

community epidemic prevention measures, the

physical and mental health of residents, residents of

epidemic prevention activities, three aspects to build

residents' satisfaction evaluation of community

epidemic prevention services, see Table 1(Peng

2018). The evaluation section uses Likert 5-point

scale to score.

In this paper, based on the index system of related

studies, the hierarchical analysis method is used to

construct an index system for evaluating the

residents’ satisfaction of community pandemic

prevention and control in community C. The analytic

hierarchy process, proposed by Saaty, an American

operations researcher, is a decision making method

that decomposes the elements related to decision

making into levels such as objectives, criteria and

programs, on the basis of which qualitative and

quantitative analysis is carried out (Wang 2003).

There are four calculation methods i thins method,

and considering the realistic operability and data

characteristics, this study selects the arithmetic

average method (summation method) for the

calculation of questionnaire index weights, and the

calculation steps are: ① normalize the elements of

the judgment matrix by column; ② add the

normalized columns; ③ divide the summed vector

by n to obtain the weight vector(Deng, Zeng, Chen,

Zhao 2012).

Step 1: through two comparisons, to determine the

relative importance between the secondary indicators,

Analysis of the Involution Community Management in Emergency Public Health Event based on a Evaluation Index Establishment and

Experimental Date Processing

165

this paper refers to the 3/3 to 9/1 scale system to

determine the corresponding a

value, to the second-

level indicator of the ratio of the more decisive

moment array, recorded as A,

namely:

(2)

The implication of a

is that the weight of the i

indicator is a multiple of the importance of the j

indicator.

Step 2: Solve the weight w according to the A

matrix, remember ω=(ω

…ω

)

(2)

Calculate geometric mean













1062.0

2604.0

6333.0

Normalize by column













1047.0

2583.0

6370.0

Applying Row geometry mean and Normalization

right to A, identity λ

max.













13/15/1

313/1

531













105.0

258.0

637.0













3182.0

7848.0

9355.1



max

)(

3.0385 (3)

Step 3： Calculate the consistency ratio CR to

check the rationality of the constructed judgment

matrix A and the weight vector derived from it.

=CR

(4)

0193.0

30385.3

1-n

max

−

(5)

1.0037.0

52.0

0193.0

CR <===

(6)

Therefore, the degree of consistency of A is

relatively high, and the weight of the structure is

reasonable.

Similarly, the weight of the three-level indicator

can be set, the specific weight value is shown in Table

Residents are the service objects of the

community. Their evaluation and perception of

community anti-pandemic work are important

indicators to measure the effectiveness of community

prevention and control. The perceptibility of

community pandemic prevention is based on

community residents' perceptions and satisfaction

with the various pandemic prevention activities in the

community, and the secondary indicators are

embedded in the three perspectives of emergency

management theory: prevention beforehand, handling

during the event, and evaluation afterwards, and are

assigned to different pandemic prevention activities

in the community. The physical and mental health is

based on the self-assessment of community residents'

physical and mental health in the absence of

confirmed or meaningful patients in the community.

The secondary indicators are weighted according to

physical and psychological categories. The pandemic

prevention behavior is the self-measurement of the

residents' self-prevention behavior in the community

activities based on the classification of the pandemic

prevention activities according to the emergency

management theory, and according to the coverage

PMBDA 2021 - International Conference on Public Management and Big Data Analysis

166

and importance of the indicators in the situation of the

whole community against the pandemic. The

secondary indicators of pandemic prevention

behaviors and pandemic prevention concerns are

assigned weight. The weights of specific indicators is

shown in the table below.

Table 1 Weight of indicators at each level of the questionnaire

First level

evaluation index

Second level

evaluation index

Weights

Third level evaluation

index

Weights

Satisfaction

Pandemic

prevention efforts

0.637

Publicit

0.111

Screening residents 0.435

Prevention work

attitudes

0.103

Residents' normal

service

0.043

Information

disclosure

0.043

Community

hygiene

0.205

Care for the

vulnerable

0.043

Physical and

mental health

situation

0.258

Physical health 0.5

Mental health 0.5

Residents'

pandemic

prevention

behavior

0.105

Anti-pandemic

ehavio

0.75

Concerns about the

andemic

0.25

4 RESULTS & DISCUSSIONS

4.1 Description of Emergency

Management of Community C

Community C has management challenges due to its

own characteristics. It has five resident groups under

its jurisdiction, and each resident group has a group

cadre for full-time integrated management. The

community also has a complex demographic

composition, with three ethnic groups living there,

making it difficult to manage. In terms of the

management of institutional mechanism, the low

incentive personnel management system caused by

low salary, low welfare and low threshold is difficult

to enhance stickiness to their own jobs among social

workers, thus threatening the effectiveness of

community governance. At the same time, the lack of

assessment mechanism will inevitably have a

negative impact on the effectiveness of community

prevention and control to a certain extent.

In addition, the COVID-19 led to high-volume,

high-stress epidemic prevention work of community

C: ① Suspected person identification ② Full

information collection③ Resumption of work and

schooling④Routine check of prevention⑤Normal

work.

4.2 Assessment of Emergency

Management of Community C

4.2.1 Data Source and Statistical Analysis

A total of 250 questionnaires were distributed to

residents in this survey, and 195 valid questionnaires

were recovered. The Likert's pentameter technique

and incorporating the indicator weighting system, a

five-level evaluation subset is used in the statistics of

scores. Date collected are processed by SPSS

software.

The scores assigned to the questionnaire

secondary indicators and questionnaire questions

were calculated to yield the primary indicators and

overall questionnaire scores as shown in Figure 1.

Analysis of the Involution Community Management in Emergency Public Health Event based on a Evaluation Index Establishment and

Experimental Date Processing

167

Figure 1: Overall questionnaire and Tier 1 indicator scores.

Referring to the literature, we choose 4 as the high

and low score boundary of this research, and we can

conclude that “Community pandemic prevention

efforts", "Physical and mental health situation" and

"Pandemic prevention behaviour" (He 2013). These

three first indicators have high scores, and the overall

score of the questionnaire is 4.47, which also belongs

to the high score range. This good score indicates that

the residents of Community C generally approve of

the anti-pandemic work of the social workers and that

the community anti-pandemic work has achieved

achievements.

4.2.2 Analysis of the Scores of Second Level

Evaluation Index under the Primary

Indicator

a) Community pandemic prevention efforts

The survey on residents’ perceptibility of community

pandemic prevention efforts was mainly evaluated in

seven dimensions, including publicity, screening

residents, prevention work attitudes, residents’

normal service, information disclosure, community

hygiene, care for the vulnerable etc. The indicator

aims to directly analyse the effectiveness of

community prevention and control work, and the

specific scores are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Scores for Second level evaluation index the

Community Community prevention efforts.

From this figure, it can be seen that the scores of

the above seven dimensions are all good, and the

residents of Community C highly approve of the work

of social workers in these aspects.

b) Physical and mental health

The survey on the physical and mental health of the

residents was conducted mainly in two aspects:

physical health and mental health. The long period of

closed homes during the pandemic had a negative

impact on the physical and mental health of residents,

so how to guide residents to maintain good physical

and mental health is also one of the important

indicators to examine the effectiveness of community

governance. As shown in Figure 3, the physical health

score of residents in Community C during the

pandemic was 4.41, and the mental health score was

4.37, which is a good score, and this good result could

not be achieved without the guidance of social

workers.

Figure 3: Scores for second level evaluation index Physical

and Mental Health Indicators of the Population.

c) Pandemic prevention behaviour

This indicator was established mainly to examine

whether residents have formed scientific and

reasonable pandemic prevention behaviors under the

guidance of community propaganda, including

insisting on wearing masks and opening windows for

ventilation, etc. In addition, it can also explore

whether residents pay attention to the pandemic

development situation in their own community, which

is a key cut-off point to measure the residents'

integration and sense of responsibility to the

community. From the analysis of the data, it is clear

that most of the residents in Community C said that

they insisted on scientific pandemic prevention

without the guidance of social workers, and it has

become a normal life style for the residents in the

community to pay close attention to the pandemic

development situation in their community.

4,4

4,39

4,6225

44,55

1.Pandemic prevention

efforts

2.Physical and mental

health situation

3.Residents' pandemic

prevention behavior

Total Questionnaire Score(4.47)

4,17

4,52

4,47

4,25

4,53

4,62

4,17

3,8 4 4,2 4,4 4,6 4,8

1.Publicity

2.Screening residents

3.Prevention work attitudes

4.ResideInformation…

5.Information disclosure

6.Community hygiene

7.Care for the vulnerable

Community Pandemic Prevention Effect

（4.39)

4,41

4,37

4 4,2 4,4 4,6 4,8 5

1.Physical health

2.Mental health

Physical and mental health

situation(4.39)

PMBDA 2021 - International Conference on Public Management and Big Data Analysis

168

Figure 4: Scores for Second level evaluation index

Pandemic prevention behaviour.

d) Summary of the results of the questionnaire

According to the analysis of the questionnaire data,

we can see that the pandemic prevention and control

work in Community C is recognized by the majority

of the residents, and the pandemic prevention and

control in Community C has achieved achievements

in this dimension. However, when combined with the

above, it is easy to see that behind this good result is

inefficiency and overload, and thus a clear dilemma

of involution, which is mainly due to the combination

of daily management system loopholes and

emergency pressure of public health emergencies.

5 CONCLUSIONS

However, due to the loopholes in the community

management system and the lack of capacity of the

social work team represented by the community

secretary, the community was unable to effectively

take time out from the increasingly heavy workload

to think about and improve the inefficient and

unreasonable work processes, and the work pressure

could not be effectively transformed into governance

performance. Therefore, even though the community

achieved remarkable governance performance, the

result was more based on the reverse incentive of the

institutional space rather than the community's own

spontaneous governance effectiveness, and such a

pushed anti-epidemic model was doomed to high

load, high pressure and low efficiency.

The logic behind the involution of community

epidemic fighting also creates a vicious circle in the

management system of Community C. Due to the

backward economic development and unsound

institutional environment, there is an obvious

mismatch between the incentive mechanism and

work pressure in Community C. The motivation and

initiative of social workers cannot be effectively

mobilized. The excessive pressure caused by the

tedious tasks in the public health emergencies and the

inefficient working methods of the actors made this

problem even more exposed, and when the pressure

gradually accumulated, the fatigue of the social

workers who were already lacking passion for their

work became more prominent, and the effectiveness

of governance further decreased. When the pressure

reaches a certain stage, the role of incentive

mechanism will be further weakened and the

enthusiasm of social workers will be further

weakened, and the inwardly-rolled dilemma will

come back again with a higher profile.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Soochow University's 2020 Jiangsu University

Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training

Program "Break the "involution" to "outside":

Research on the "involution" of community

emergency management" in public health

emergencies"" (project number 202010285070Y)

phased results, Supervisors: Professor Zhang Chen,

Professor Chen Jinhua.

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4,65

4,54

44,55

1.Anti-pandemic

behavior

2.Concerns about

the pandemic

Residents' pandemic prevention behavior(4.60)

Analysis of the Involution Community Management in Emergency Public Health Event based on a Evaluation Index Establishment and

Experimental Date Processing

169