Evaluating the Public Safety Education APP's Impact on Emergency Awareness and Competency – A Case study from "Qiang’an" platform in Shenzhen, China

The frequent occurrence of severe disasters under climate change in recent years has underscored the critical need for enhancing public emergency safety awareness and skills. The rapid growth of big data, artificial intelligence, and the mobile Internet has prompted emergency management authorities to embrace digital technologies in online emergency education platforms to improve the effectiveness of public awareness and education. However, a gap remains in understanding how these digital technologies specifically enhance public safety awareness and competencies. This study explores this issue using technological affordance, employing the application, a large-scale emergency education platform with more than 5 million users (2021) in Shenzhen as a case study. Based on the two core functional modules of integrated media and digital education and training provided by the platform, a model of the relationship between the availability of technology and the public's emergency safety awareness and capacity was established. The model is validated through the analysis of 802 surveys collected via the platform using ADANCO2.2. The findings indicate that media affordance significantly influences emergency safety awareness, but its impact on emergency safety capabilities is mediated by awareness. In contrast, digital education and training affordance effect on both public emergency safety awareness and competencies.