Mapping the knowledge frontiers of public risk communication in disaster risk management

Abstract

Public risk communication (PRC) emerged as an interdisciplinary field in response to the need for integrative approaches to cope with individual resilience and adaptive behavior during emergencies, promoting a government or stakeholder-public dyad approach and providing policy and institutional frameworks. Research on PRC is fast developing into a diverse knowledge domain from a descriptive and theoretical approach to an empirical approach and diverse theories relating to risk and disaster management. However, scholars’ diverse philosophical ideas and multifarious research can inhibit interdisciplinary discourse and hamper practical implications. This integrative review analysis of research in PRC from different interdisciplinary involved bibliometric analysis and content analysis of 819 articles from the Web of Science Core Collection database. The study aims to ascertain the development trends in this field. The bibliometric analysis and systematic review were conducted to identify the knowledge patterns. The findings illustrate the mappings of the trend and emergence of PRC, contribution analysis and address a macroview of risk communication in disaster management, providing an in-depth understanding of scholarly contributions by summarising previous studies, milestones and frontiers. It also identifies several research gaps such as limitations on cross-cultural comparisons addressing risk communication, perceptions and behaviors in making causality claim, geographical diversity in risk communication and so forth. And provides a deeper understanding of the emerging trend in this field of study. The article concludes by proposing and discussing future research for further advancement of this discipline.

Keywords:

• Public risk communication
• disaster risk management
• bibliometric analysis
• content analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The research is supported by the grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China (71904124 and 72134005), MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Grant of Humanities and Social Sciences (18YJCZH092).