A multi-agent-based online opinion dissemination model for China’s crisis information release policy during hazardous chemical leakage emergencies into rivers
| Pages | 537-557 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-04-2015-0126 |
| Date | 14 August 2017 |
| Published date | 14 August 2017 |
| Author | Lean Yu,Ling Li,Ling Tang,Wei Dai,Chihab Hanachi |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Bibliometrics,Databases,Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet,Records management & preservation,Document management |
A multi-agent-based online
opinion dissemination model for
China’s crisis information release
policy during hazardous chemical
leakage emergencies into rivers
Lean Yu
School of Economics and Management,
Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, China
Ling Li and Ling Tang
School of Economics and Management,
Beihang University, Beijing, China
Wei Dai
School of Economics and Management,
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, and
Chihab Hanachi
IRIT Laboratory, University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to develop a multi-agent-based simulation model for the online
opinion dissemination during hazardous chemical leakage emergencies into rivers in China, to explore an
appropriate crisis information release policy of China’s government for controlling public panic.
Design/methodology/approach –In the proposed model, two fundamental attributes of crisis information,
i.e., truthfulness ( for true or false news) and attitude (for positive, neutral or negative opinion), are considered.
Four major agents in the online community system, i.e., citizens, the government, media and opinion leaders,
are included. Using four typical accidents of hazardous chemical leakage into rivers in China as case studies,
insightful policy implications can be obtained for crisis management and panic control.
Findings –The news about the terrible potential damages from such a type of accidents will instantly arise
wide-ranging public panic; therefore, the corresponding crisis information release policy should be carefully
designed. It is strongly advised against publishing false news to temporarily conceal the accidents, which will
seriously hurt the government’s reputation and agitate much larger-scale public panic in terms of degree and
duration. To mitigate public panic, the true news especially about treatment measurements should be
published immediately. If the government does nothing and releases no crisis information, the public panic
will go out of control.
Research limitations/implications –This paper only focuses on the crisis information release policies
from the perspectives of the government. Furthermore, this study especially focuses on the cases in China,
and extending the proposed model study for general contexts is an important direction to improve this study.
Finally, the proposed model should be extended to other types of emergencies to further justify its
generalization and universality, especially various natural catastrophes like storms, floods, tsunamis, etc.
Originality/value –This paper develops a mul ti-agent-based mod el for online public opin ion
dissemination in emergency to explore an appropriate crisis information release policy for controlling
public panic stemming f rom hazardous chemicals lea kage accidents into rivers. T he proposed model makes
major contributions to the l iterature from two perspectives. First, the cr isis information about emergency
accidents are divided in to true and false news based on the tru thfulness attribute, and into ne utral, positive
and negative emotions based on t he attitude attribute. Second, the proposed mo del covers the main agents
in the online virtual commun ity.
Keywords Emergency management, Crisis information, Hazardous chemical leakage,
Multi-agent-based model, Online opinion dissemination, Public panic
Paper type Research paper
Online Information Review
Vol. 41 No. 4, 2017
pp. 537-557
© Emerald PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-04-2015-0126
Received 18 April 2015
Revised 1 November 2016
Accepted 14 February 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
537
China’s crisis
information
release policy
1. Introduction
In recent years, there existed increasing hazardous chemical leakage emergencies into rivers
in China, not only threatening public safety, health and property in terms of physical
damages, but also leading to wide-ranging social instabilities in terms of public panic
(He et al., 2011; Huo et al., 2011). Current, typical cases in China include the benzene leakage
emergency into the Songhua River caused by an explosion accident in the Jilin Chemical
Industry Co. Ltd (November 13, 2005), the cadmium leakage emergency into the Beijiang
River (December 18, 2005), and the cadmium leakage accident into the Longjiang River
( January 15, 2012). Due to the terrible potential damages, emergency management for
hazardous chemical leakage accidents into rivers has raised an increasingly large attention
from both policy makers and academic researchers (Si et al., 2012). Therefore, this study
especially focuses on the emergencies of hazardous chemical leakage into rivers in China,
and explores an appropriate policy of China’s government for controlling public panic.
With the rapid development of the internet, controlling the public panic stemming from
hazardouschemical leakage emergenciesinto rivers becomes an extremelytough task in crisis
management (Taylor and Perry, 2005). First, through the online community system with
anonymity, diffusion and interactivity, crisis information about the emergencies is spread
more quickly and on a much larger scale (Liu et al., 2011). Second, without an appropriate
guidance,this spread of crisis informationmight promote online public panic andeven cause a
social crisisin the real world (Patrix et al.,2012). A famous case in China is the panic buyingof
water during the benzene leakage emergency into the Songhua River (November 13, 2005),
in which the government has ever released false news to conceal the real accident and thus
wide-ranging public panic was set off when the public knew the truth. Therefore, this study
tends to investigate the online opinion dissemination mechanism during the emergencies of
hazardous chemical leakage into rivers, and to explore the corresponding crisis information
release policy for controlling public panic, which can effectively avoid both economic losses
and social instabilities (Huo et al., 2011; Wei, Zhou and Zhao, 2011).
There were few research studies on opinion dissemination and panic management
during the hazardous chemical leakage emergencies into rivers, to the best of our
knowledge. Therefore, the related studies concerning general emergencies are otherwise
focused on. As for opinion dissemination, diverse crisis information about emergencies was
thoroughly investigated. For example, Dai et al. (2011) presented a cycle model to capture
the spreading mechanism of emergency information in the internet. Wei, Wen-wu and
Lin (2011) proposeda diffusion network topology of crisisinformation during the emergency
of panic buying of salt in China. Zhao et al. (2012) proposed an interactive model to explore
rumor dissemination during theemergency of iodized salt shortagepanic. Generally, the crisis
information about emergencies can be categorized into crisis information (or true news) and
rumor (or false news)according to truthfulness (Liu et al., 2011; Zhao et al., 2012),and positive,
neutral and negative opinions according to attitude (Adam et al., 2012). Therefore, the two
important attributes of crisis information are especially considered in this study, i.e., the
truthfulness( for true or falsenews) and the attitude (for positive, neutral or negative opinion).
For panic management, various panic behaviors during emergencies have been topics of
extensiveinterest in the literature. For example,Pan et al. (2007) presented a multi-agent-based
framework to simulate the behavior of emergency evacuation. Joo et al. (2013) explored
human behaviors in warehouse fire evacuation using an affordance-based finite state
automata model.
As for simulation techniques, the multi-agent-based model, a typical bottom-up analysis
tool, has been popularly employed in the field of emergency management. Unlike other
traditional simulation models (e.g. econometric models and computable general equilibrium)
from the macroscopic perspective, the bottom-up analysis technique describes comp lex
systems from the microscopic perspective, focusing on the individual activities of each agent
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