Effectiveness of Prefabricated Construction in Major Public Health Emergency Management: A fsQCA Analysis

The construction and management of emergency medical facilities is critical during major public health crisis. In recent years, the outbreak of pandemics, such as SARS, Zika, Ebola, and COVID-19, has continuously driven higher requirements on the government's prevention and control capabilities. In response to the dire challenges of COVID-19, the ability to swiftly construct medical facilities to fight the epidemic, quickly and effectively prevent and control the spread of the virus, has been greatly valued globally. It is shown that compared with traditional on-site construction, prefabricated buildings, characterized by high productivities in factories, high quality, ease of cost estimation and management, short on-site construction time, and less labor intensive, have become a more practicable option and witnessed a surge for emergency medical buildings in fighting epidemics. This research aims to allude to the effectiveness of emergency management of major public health incidents from the perspective of the prefabricated buildings. Based on the framework of the prefabrication system to refine antecedent variables, this research employed the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze 15 emergency medical projects, either the “Xiaotangshan” model or the “Combination of Peace and Warfare” model in China. Eight internal antecedent variables and three outcome variables were extracted from these cases to explore the antecedents and path configuration affecting the effectiveness of emergency management of major public health events. The finding of this study can serve as a reference for public agencies and industry leaders to improve the effectiveness of emergency management of major public health incidents by taking full advantage of prefabrication construction.