Community Services and Social Involvement in COVID-19 Governance in Urban China (preprint)

ABSTRACT

Background: This study explores how the services provided by different types of Chinese communities varied in their impact on the social involvement of their residents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous research has shown that services in traditional Chinese communities have supported pandemic governance because of their human resource advantages. However, we argue that the services provided by intelligent communities not only adhered to COVID-19 pandemic governance but also promoted the social involvement of the residents.Methods: Using a case study approach of the intelligent community Fang Xing and the traditional community Qili Tang, both located in Hefei city in Anhui, China, this article compares traditional and intelligent Chinese community services. We conducted 42 in-person interviews (21 residents, 10 volunteers, 11 staff members), 30 telephone interviews (10 residents, 10 volunteers, 10 staff members), and 50 online video interviews (30 residents, 10 volunteers, 10 staff members) from June to August 2020.Results: The findings suggest that while the traditional community decreased its residents’ social involvement by restricting certain services during the pandemic, the intelligent community was able to apply COVID-19 governance measures without restricting its residents’ social involvement. In the traditional community, family members were obliged to take responsibility for daily living services and family care tasks. This community often responded slowly when providing required services compared to intelligent communities. The intelligent community contributed greatly to its residents’ social involvement in the process of pandemic governance. It offered an attractive option for residents to act as community service managers and prepared its residents for local-level pandemic governance.Conclusions: This study provides a better understanding of the relationship between community services and residents’ social involvement in terms of the different dimensions of community services. The intelligent community model can act as a reference for international community development during health emergencies.