Toward Resilient Cross‐Regional Emergency Governance: A Demand‐Driven and Propagation‐Based Evolutionary Cooperation Framework

Cross-regional cooperation is essential when responding to large-scale disasters, yet it is not always easy to achieve. Empirical evidences reveal that regions facing similar disaster pressures may have different performances, i.e., either sharing resources or engaging in competition. Meanwhile, policymakers often lack a clear understanding of when cooperation is needed, why it emerges or fails, and how it can be sustained. To solve the problems, we identify two critical factors in cross-regional cooperation: disaster demand (which reflects shortage risk and response pressure) and disaster propagation (which generates spillover risks and cross-regional externalities). Based on them, we develop a propagation-based and demand-driven evolutionary cooperation (PDEC) framework to examine how disaster propagation, disaster demand, and governance structure jointly shape cooperation dynamics. We then classify disasters into three propagation types and construct evolutionary game models under decentralized and centralized governance settings. Our analysis indicates that cooperation is conditional on the interactive effects of shortage risk and spillover risk. Centralized governance further reshapes the outcome structure, lowering outcome volatility, reducing inefficient competition, and broadening the cooperation conditions. In summary, this study provides a conceptual and explanatory framework for assessing cooperation feasibility, cooperation failure risk, and the need for central coordination, thereby offering the risk community guidance for more proactive risk assessment, coordination design, and resilient disaster response.