Communication Efficiency of Local Governments in China: Measurements and Influencing Factors in Public Emergencies

Government communication, as an important policy instrument for crisis management, has received worldwide attention from both practitioners and theorists. However, there is little theory-driven research on the quantitative evaluation of government communication, and its influencing factors are still unclear. In this paper, a new model is constructed based on the input-output framework to evaluate the communication efficiency of local governments in public emergencies. A fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) model is further introduced to analyze the configuration paths that explain the differences in communication efficiency. 24,479 tweets from 31 provincial WeChat accounts in China during the first COVID-19 outbreak is analyzed with the proposed model. Results indicate that communication efficiency show significant regional heterogeneity among provincial governments. The fsQCA analysis identifies 2 paths for efficient communication and 3 for inefficient communication. The implications of our findings and suggestions for future crisis communication are discussed at last.