The flip side of the coin: Perils of public–private disaster cooperation

Abstract

Private companies often actively engage in disaster response. In recent years, disaster resilience, including public-private partnerships, has been identified as an ideational cornerstone of crisis management policy. This study offers insights into how these international policy trends in disaster management manifest in practice.Based on an empirical study of a large wildfire in the Swedish province of Västmanland in 2014, we investigate how market opportunities and principles influenced the rescue efforts and cooperation between public disaster responders and private actors. The findings illustrate the flip side of public-private disaster cooperation, in relation to three perils: (1) uncertain costs of private disaster support owing to the ambivalent roles of private actors as either disaster entrepreneurs or volunteers; (2) a dangerous work environment for private actors involved in public disaster response and (3) e-volunteers' provision of business donation details around the public response by naming and shaming 'ungenerous' private companies.