Understanding Willingness to Share Information among Citizens and Public Organizations:: The Case of Emergency Preparedness and Response

The relationships between citizens and public organizations have long been explored, particularly through the lenses of service provision and, more recently, participation and engagement. Previous research has described how citizens could interact with government agencies as well as some of the reasons why they are willing to do it and why governments promote or hinder certain interactions with citizens. However, the complexities of these relationships, especially as they evolve into more collaborative expressions such as information sharing, require further study. Particularly, willingness to share information among citizens and public organizations is not well understood and more details about different information sharing flows and a diversity of perspectives are needed. Using data from focus groups with first responders and local residents in a rural community, this paper analyzes multiple interactions focusing on specific information sharing flows (i.e. Citizen to Government; Government to Citizen; Citizen to Citizen; and Government to Government). We found that there are important differences and similarities between the perspectives of first responders and local residents in terms of the importance and rationale of sharing information among different actors. We are also providing more details about the willingness of citizens and first responders to share information with different actors in the context of emergency management in a rural community as well as some of their main reasons.