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While public emergencies have impacted the construction industry deeply, prior studies have left the response mechanisms and efficiency of construction management policies across different administrative levels during public emergencies ambiguous, and they have not adequately explored the influencing factors. Thus, this study explores the dynamic mechanisms of policy response by taking the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study, focusing on policy vertical transmission between central and local governments and horizontal diffusion among regions. This study adopts a mixed-methods design: In the qualitative phase relevant literature is analyzed to construct the theoretical framework of policy process mechanisms, while also identifying five dimensions of influencing factors on policy process efficiency. In the quantitative phase, construction project management policies across 31 Chinese provinces during the COVID-19 pandemic are collected, and zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) regression and Zero-inflated Negative Binomial (ZINB) models are employed for data analysis. The study finds that the policy response efficiency follows a U-shaped temporal evolution, aligning with project resilience theory. The study also identifies the influencing mechanisms: asymmetric effects of construction engineering scale (negative for relative scale, unstable for absolute scale); fiscal allocation capacity negatively impacts efficiency via policy-fiscal substitution; younger leaders boost efficiency, while vertical governmental pressure exerts a counter-intuitive negative effect. Vertical governmental pressure negatively affects efficiency, with horizontal pressure showing no significant effect. The study provides a practical toolkit for construction enterprises to align with efficient policies, helps project managers optimize cost control and risk mitigation amid crises, and guides policymakers in designing targeted emergency policies.
Wang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.