Resolving the unintended consequences of collective co-production through group co-production: a case study in Shanghai | Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 11, Article number: 1505 (2024) Cite this article

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Co-production is an important approach to enhance service resilience in disaster response. However, most existing studies did not differentiate various types of co-production (i.e., collective vs. group co-production) and consider the potential tension between them. Based on evidence from self-organized groups for people with disabilities in Shanghai, this study found that as a type of collective co-production, compulsory epidemic prevention measures during the Covid-19 pandemic produced unintended consequences for people with disabilities: both government-organized and independent NGOs were forced to close offices, causing formal social services to be discontinued. However, as a type of group co-production, self-organized groups played an indispensable role in helping restore service resilience by providing material and consultation services to people with disabilities through online and offline approaches. This study not only contributes to the co-production literature through unveiling the tension and discussing the relation between collective and group co-production, but also provides valuable guidance for the government on how to promote self-organized groups to improve emergency management capacity.

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has caused many tragedies all over the world, while its negative impact on different populations varies. As revealed by some recent studies in the United States, Covid-19 is more likely to adversely impact socially vulnerable groups (Gaynor and Wilson, 2020), such as people of color and racial minorities, particularly African Americans (Wright and Merritt, 2020). Vulnerable groups tend to be less resilient in their capabilities to respond to and recover from natural and human-induced hazards and disasters since they usually have less resources compared to groups in an advantaged position.

Co-production between government and society is considered as an effective way to help vulnerable groups deal with the negative impacts caused by disasters. Co-production involves many stages of disaster management, including engaging citizens and voluntary groups in the formulation of disaster prevention and mitigation policies (Davies et al., 2015; Johnson et al., 2022), popularization of disaster prevention knowledge (Crawford et al., 2021), food and medical assistance in the process of disaster relief (Dollery et al., 2020), report of disaster information (Lejano et al., 2021), disaster cleaning and reconstruction (Rayamajhee et al., 2022; McLennan et al., 2021) and so on. However, co-production is a relatively complex concept, which can be divided into various types according to the participation procedures and the number of participants (Bovaird, 2007; Osborne and Strokosch, 2013).

Due to the differences of focus, different types of co-production may bring new problems while playing their roles, so it is necessary to treat co-production cautiously. This paper takes the change of service provision system for people with disabilities during the Covid-19 pandemic in Shanghai in 2020 as a case, and analyzes the different effects of group co-production and collective co-production in emergency management. This paper found that as a type of collective co-production to prevent the spread of the virus, epidemic control and prevention measurements (such as lockdown orders) may cause unintended consequences for people with disabilities since these measurements forced government-organized NGOs and formal independent nonprofits to close offices and stop providing formal services to people with disabilities, but group co-production through self-organized groups can make up for the gap in physical and psychological needs of people with disabilities during the lockdown period of the pandemic.

The structure of this paper is as follows. The second section reviews the literature on co-production and develops an analytical framework. The third section explains the reasons for choosing the case and the source of data. The fourth section introduces the changes of the service provision system for people with disabilities in W District of Shanghai before and after the pandemic, and the types and approaches of services provided by self-organized groups. The fifth section summarizes the conclusion and the limitations of this study, and points out the directions for future research.

Compared with government that monopolizes the supply of public services, co-production with citizens is considered as an alternative approach to improve the quality and effectiveness of services (Brudney and England, 1983). Although co-production has been widely used in many areas of public service, scholars have not yet reached a unified definition. One important debate is whether only citizens’ active and voluntary participation in providing public services can be regarded as co-production. Some scholars insist that co-production is more focused on citizens’ active participation than passive obedience (Parks et al., 1981; Brudney and England, 1983; Brandsen and Honingh, 2016). Others argue that voluntary or involuntary involvement can both be considered as co-production even though it is required by mandatory laws and norms (Alford, 2009; Osborne and Strokosch, 2013). Alford (2014) believes that the motivations for co-production are complex and diverse, so compliance can also accompany with voluntariness. If citizens realize that their participation is crucial to the creation of public value, they can actively participate in it as well (Osborne et al., 2016). In this study, we follow the latter viewpoint that both voluntary and involuntary participation are co-production.

According to different participation procedures along with different participants, different types of co-production were defined in the literature. Many concepts, such as consumer co-production, co-governance, institutionalized co-production and co-consultation, have enriched the interpretation scope of co-production (Whitaker, 1980; Rich, 1981; Brudney, 1984; Bovaird, 2007; Osborne and Strokosch, 2013; Nabatchi et al., 2017). Brudney and England, (1983) divided co-production into individual co-production, group co-production, and collective co-production based on the size of beneficiaries (see Table 1). Some other scholars divided co-production into individual and collective co-production according to the number of people involved in the co-production process (Pestoff, 2012; Bovaird et al., 2016; Alford and Yates, 2016). In recent studies, the distinctions and relationships between individual co-production and collective co-production seem to get more attention (Pestoff, 2012, 2014; Osborne et al., 2013; Park, 2020). Nevertheless, little is known about the interactions between collective and group co-production.

Co-production during a pandemic is regarded as one of the important ways to make up for the government’s shortcomings. In the literature discussing co-production during a pandemic, there are mainly two types of co-production (see Table 2). Compliance and abidance with government regulations, such as self-quarantine and wearing masks, is deemed as a sort of co-production to control the spread of virus (Steen and Brandsen, 2020; Wong, 2022). In the process of this co-production, digital technology has played an important role. Studies found that citizens’ understanding of the virus can be improved through the publicity of experts and the active disclosure of information by the government, thus promoting citizens’ compliance behavior (Li, 2020; Wu et al., 2022).

Delivering necessary services to the public, such as psychological counseling and sending disaster relief supplies, is also another sort of co-production (Yeo and Lee, 2020; Tu, 2022). Based on the background of South Korea, China, Italy and other countries, several case studies show that some volunteers with high altruism actively organized themselves to form various self-organized groups to meet the needs of the public for purchasing daily necessities, seeking medical treatment and protection against virus (Miao et al., 2021; Liu et al., 2023). At the same time, the lockdown policy during the pandemic may cause anxiety and tension among the public, and some self-organized groups also provided corresponding psychological counseling services (Zou and Zhao, 2022). However, in existing research, the manifestations and formation mechanism of collective and group co-production are elaborated separately, and the interaction between the two are often neglected and underexplored.

Built upon the perspective of co-production, an analytical framework was developed to depict the potential tension between group co-production and collective co-production and explains how self-organized groups restore service resilience for people with disabilities. The focus of this study is to explore how self-organized groups for people with disabilities achieved service resilience by providing essential social services to them during the three-month strict epidemic prevention and control period (late January to early May 2020) in Shanghai, when formal channels of service provision for people with disabilities was closed due to the restrictions on facility opening and holding in-person activities.

In this study, the joint efforts by the government, government-organized and independent nonprofits, and citizens (including people with disabilities) in stopping the spread of the virus as well as providing basic social services to people in need during the crisis were defined as a specific type of co-production amid a pandemic (Zhao and Wu, 2020). From the perspective of beneficiary scale proposed by Brudney and England (1983), this process can be divided into two types: group co-production and collective co-production. First, obligation to comply with epidemic prevention and control requirements from the government served as a kind of collective co-production, which aims to protect the life, health and economic interests of individuals and organizations throughout the country. Although complying to the measurements seems to be compulsory obedience, it does not mean that citizens must have a negative, forced, and helpless attitude. They can also actively respond to the government’s call and take actions, such as wearing masks, reducing going out, and strengthening disinfection, to protect their own lives and health and promote the success of epidemic prevention and control in the whole society. Without citizens’ compliance and voluntary engagement, it would be impossible to control the pandemic (Wu et al., 2022). Second, providing basic social services to people in need is regarded as a sort of group co-production, which is concerned about the interests of specific groups.

The collective co-production specializing in one-size-fits-all may lead to some unintended consequences for the operation of the third sector. In the Chinese context, some government-organized NGOs (GONGOs) tightly coupled with the government so they would actively respond to the government’s appeal, since their personnel and finances are controlled by the government (Smith and Zhao, 2016). At the same time, some independent nonprofits also follow the actions of the government often due to the requirement of receiving government funding. Both types of formal nonprofits stopped offering social services during the lockdown period, causing significant damage to the service provision system for some vulnerable groups. Self-organized groups, as a form of group co-production, were forced to work actively to achieve mutual assistance when the formal nonprofits failed to serve people with disabilities. These groups were formed mainly by the voluntary participation of residents in the neighborhoods with the support of government departments before the pandemic. As a result, they have strong persistence and initiative. Meanwhile, the members of these self-organized groups understand local norms and relationships, and can respond to social needs quickly since they are based in the local neighborhoods (Miao et al., 2021). They could easily provide various emotional support and physical services for people with disabilities during the pandemic, thus ensuring roughly the same service supply as before the pandemic.

This result is defined as that service resilience is guaranteed. Resilience is a relatively complex and vague concept. It is generally believed that resilience includes the meanings of rebound, overcoming, adaptation and sustainability (Meerow et al., 2016; Assarkhaniki et al., 2020; Büyüközkan et al., 2022). For example, the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) believes that resilience is an ability of a system, community or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate to, and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including through the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions (UNISDR, 2012). In the following discussion of resilience, resilience implies that the system not only returns to the previous level, but also transforms itself and moves into another regime of behavior after crises and shocks (Wardekker, 2021). This study follows the idea that resilience is towards recovery rather than evolution, and define service resilience as that the service provision system can resist and adapt to external shocks and risks, so as not to go to the situation of system failure.

This study analyzes the interactive process between different types of co-production in the emergency management, and holds that group co-production can overcome the unintended negative impacts of collective co-production and keep the service provision resilient during crisis periods. The direct purpose of collective co-production is to maintain the life and health of the whole citizens, it only cares about whether people are alive or infected. However, too strict epidemic prevention and control mode is easy to damage the welfare of citizens, including the supply of basic living materials, such as food and medicine. Long-term isolation and restriction measures may cause psychological problems, such as public anxiety and depression. In this case, group co-production focuses on the service supply of different groups, thus minimizing the adverse effects caused by collective co-production. At the same time, group co-production has wider positive externalities (McMullin, 2023). After the living needs are guaranteed, citizens will actively cooperate and participate in epidemic prevention and control, thus improving the efficiency of collective co-production. Only when both types of co-production work together can the society keep its internal stability while resisting external shocks (see Fig. 1).

Analytical Framework on Interaction between Collective and Group Co-production.

In this study, W District in Shanghai was selected as the field case for data collection, including both interviews and in-depth observations, mainly for two reasons: first, compared with other cities, Shanghai has been actively exploring new ways of collaborative governance between the government and social forces. It innovatively uses the mechanism of government purchasing public services and the relaxed registration system to promote social forces, so that they can show indispensable core values in democratic consultation, community building, environmental protection, and cultural inheritance.

In the service provision system for people with disabilities, Shanghai not only relies on the strength of the Disabled Persons’ Federation and other formal nonprofit organizations, but also vigorously supports many informal self-organized groups. Under the guidance and encouragement of the government, these “grassroots” organizations have strengthened close interactions among people with disabilities, thus enhancing the social capital of the whole society. The practices of service provision system for people with disabilities in Shanghai profoundly reveal the significance of active self-organized groups in enhancing the resilience of service system and ensuring service continuity, compared with other cities with relatively poor development of self-organized groups. When formal organizations fail to perform, the self-organized groups effectively buffer external shocks and ensure the relative stability of service quantity and quality. Located in the interior of Shanghai, W District paid more attention to the promotion of self-organized groups for people with disabilities. It is also an important reason for the very few infections among people with disabilities during the three-month epidemic prevention and control period, fully demonstrating the irreplaceable role of self-organized groups in responding to emergencies and safeguarding the rights and interests of vulnerable groups. The successful case of self-organized groups in W District undoubtedly provides valuable experience and profound enlightenment for other cities in China.

Second, the social service provision system reform in W district was followed by the research team since the beginning of the reform in 2010. The first author has long-term cooperative relations with the local Disabled Persons’ Federation and nonprofit organizations, and is familiar with the actors and institutions in this case, making it convenient and accessible for fieldwork and data collection. In 2010, the Disabled Persons’ Federation in W district, which is an organization managed by the local government, promoted government purchases of services for people with disabilities as part of the social service reform. As of 2020, there are about 655,397 people in W district, among which, 29,548 are registered with disabilities. Generally, in our investigation, two different periods of pandemic control existed in Shanghai: one is from late January to early May 2020 when the city was almost locked down, the other is the following months after the city was reopened in early May 2020. Our research mainly focuses on the former period.

Data for analysis is derived from the following two aspects: first, after reopening of the city in early May 2020, the research team went to W district to investigate the responses of formal nonprofit organizations to the outbreak of the COVID-19 during the three-month epidemic prevention and control period (late January to early May 2020). The formal nonprofit organizations consist of 12 government-organized NGOs (GONGOs) as service providers for people with disabilities, 1 infrastructure nonprofit organization, and 5 independent non-governmental nonprofit organizations. One of the GONGO leaders shared that all the formal services were shut down during this period. This fact was confirmed by the leader of the infrastructure nonprofit organization, which was authorized by the local district government and the Disabled Persons’ Federation in the district to oversee all the publicly funded programs. Three government officials were also interviewed: one is the main government official (A) who oversees the formal social services for people with disabilities in the whole district; the other is a government official (B) who oversees formal social services for people with disabilities in one of the sub-districts; and the third one is a government official (C) who is charge of all community governance in the whole district.

Second, about 70 semi-structured interviews were conducted with the leaders or key members of self-organized groups for people with disabilities that responded actively to the pandemic (see Appendix 1). Although people’s lives have basically returned to normal after the reopening of the city, some persons with disabilities still feel some risks, which makes it more difficult for the research team to obtain data. Therefore, this study was carried out with the support of local infrastructure nonprofit organization, which is responsible for assisting the local Disabled Persons’ Federation in providing support for these self-organized groups.

In the first round of the study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 self-organized groups at the neighborhood level in J sub-district, which is regarded as the best examples in terms of the degree of activeness among self-organized groups for people with disabilities. A group activity is organized on October 15, 2020, involving all the leaders or key members of people with disabilities. Three of them are invited to share their own experience and thinking on how to make the self-organized groups work. After the activity, one-on-one surveys were conducted with the leaders or key members of the 28 self-organized groups, who were willing to take the survey. In three other sub-districts within W District, a forum meeting was held with 9 individual members of these self-organized groups on October 16, 2020.

In the second round of the study, additional 20 interviews were conducted with leaders or key members of the self-organized groups in December 2020. The infrastructure nonprofit organization visited self-organized groups for three consecutive days, and the first author participated as an expert. In the third round of the study, the first author was invited as an expert to conduct training for some leaders or key members of self-organized groups on concept and method of social work in August 2021. The research team conducted additional interviews with leaders of another 13 self-organized groups after the training activity. That is 70 interviews in total (N = 70, 22.0% of total number of self-organized groups). According to information from the local Disabled Persons’ Federation, there are 318 self-organized groups for people with disabilities in W District in total.

The semi-structured interviews mainly cover five questions: 1) when the self-organized groups were established and when the leaders began their work; 2) the frequency of activities in 2020 and the past year; 3) what kinds of services were offered during the pandemic; 4) how the members interacted with each other during the lockdown period; 5) whether the voluntary groups held any activities related to the pandemic (see Table 3).

Third, we browsed the official website of the Disabled Persons’ Federation in W District. The federation staff often wrote some news occurred in local districts, which involved some voluntary activities undertaken by self-organized groups. At the same time, a brief working report by the Disabled Persons’ Federation has been issued every quarter. It also helps us collect relevant field materials.

In the pre-pandemic service provision system for people with disabilities in Shanghai, social services were mainly provided by the city government, Disabled Persons’ Federation, and their affiliated government-organized NGOs. At the same time, various types of formal independent nonprofit organizations and some voluntary groups have begun to participate in the social service provision system for people with disabilities. The main body of these networks for people with disabilities are composed of people with disabilities and their family members, volunteers, and the staff members of nonprofit social service agencies.

There are 12 sub-districts/townships in W district, and each has a nonprofit service agency serving people with disabilities in the area. Each nonprofit service agency is typically a government-organized nonprofit organization, which is mainly reflected in the following aspects: first, the salaries of staff members are funded by the government; second, almost all the funds for services of the agency are from the government, and the expenditure of each specific activity needs the approval from local government officials.

Under normal (pre-pandemic) conditions, each service agency mainly serves people with disabilities in the neighborhood, which is mainly divided into two parts: first, it provides day-care services for mentally or intellectually people with disabilities aged between 18 and 55, mainly including daily care and basic community rehabilitation services in the facilities; second, to assist the local Disabled Persons’ Federation in implementing the requirements of poverty relief and other social security policies, each nonprofit service agency establishes contacts with voluntary groups for people with disabilities mainly through the assistance of staff members. The focus of these nonprofit service agencies’ work is to implement the basic policy requirements of the governments and local Disabled Persons’ Federation. This focus of work is universal among the 12 nonprofit service agencies for people with disabilities.

Under the pandemic circumstance, co-production between people with disabilities and the government (and GONGOs) almost stopped. Due to the unitary state structure in China, governments at all levels, from the central to the local, were quickly mobilized and formed a command system. The local Disabled Persons’ Federation, asked the 12 nonprofit service agencies for people with disabilities to close their facilities, requesting people with disabilities to stay at home. In response to the interview, the person in charge of one social service agency shared: “After the outbreak of the virus, according to the unified arrangement of the government, the agency is required to shut down and stop providing services. In mid-late May, the facilities of the agency were reopened, so in the first half of the year, the agency was closed for almost four months.”

According to the interview, after receiving instructions from supervisors in the government, the office of the service agency was closed during the epidemic control period. The leader and staff members of this nonprofit service agency mainly interacted with people with disabilities through phone calls, including explaining the basic requirements of the epidemic prevention and control, providing assistance and emotional support to the best of their ability. In-person services accessible to people with disabilities have been discontinued during that period, which has inevitably caused some negative impacts on people with disabilities.

At the same time, co-production between people with disabilities and independent nonprofit organizations was not as effective as expected. There are 5 independent nonprofit organizations in the existing social service provision system in W district accounting for a small proportion of formal nonprofit organizations in the district. When facing the outbreak of the virus, most of these nonprofits were forced to stop implementing programs and providing services, and only a few of them have creatively provided some essential services through online platforms. The overall performance of these nonprofit organizations during that period was mediocre, as indicated by government official A: “As you have learned from your investigations, due to the epidemic prevention and control in the whole city, all public service facilities from Shanghai Disabled Persons’ Federation to local disabled persons’ Federation are required to be closed, and all programs funded by us have basically stopped. We encourage those formal nonprofit organizations to carry out online activities, but the effect is not satisfactory.” As a result, regular services from both government-organized and independent NGOs were unavailable during the lockdown period, while the demand for services increased.

After the outbreak of COVID-19, the in-person services offered by formal nonprofit organizations for people with disabilities were basically interrupted and discontinued for quite a long period of time due to the mitigation measures of epidemic prevention and control. As government official B reflected: “The epidemic is actually a big test of community capacity.”

It is revealed that the self-organized groups for people with disabilities were activated and played a significant role in this big test during the lockdown period. The neighborhood self-organized groups are loose, small, and informal groups spontaneously organized by people with disabilities and their family members and friends, which are usually composed of 8–15 individuals: usually most of them are people with disabilities, and a few are healthy people. Members are mainly based on similar interests and hobbies to form an informal network. During the epidemic control period, the network among members was activated for mutual assistance and support. In total, there are 318 self-organized groups in the entire W district, distributed in 12 sub-districts, covering 5,946 group members (covering about 20.1% of people with disabilities in the district). According to the basic information obtained, among the 318 leaders of self-organized groups, 140 are people with disabilities (about 45.0%).

As early as 2007, one of the sub-district governments (J Street) in W district encouraged people with disabilities to form neighborhood self-organized groups to promote community integration of people with disabilities. At that time, the reform at J Street achieved some positive results, and the official in charge of J street became the chairman of the local Disabled Persons’ Federation in W district later and began to promote the idea of neighborhood self-organized groups across the 12 sub-districts in the entire W district in the following decade. At that time, self-organized groups were not entirely spontaneous, partly due to the promotion and support of the district- and street-level governments and their affiliated GONGOs, the Disabled Persons’ Federation. As a result, some of these self-organized groups were very spontaneous, so they were more active, while others were set up under the impetus of the government, and thus they were not so active before the outbreak of the pandemic.

The neighborhood self-organized groups in W district had been operating for more than a decade before the outbreak of the pandemic and have established a relatively stable network of mutual assistance for people with disabilities (see Fig. 2). From the samples interviewed, the earliest self-organized groups were established in the year of 2008. In the first few years, about 2 neighborhood self-organized groups were established each year. 2012 to 2014 was a period of rapid development, with an average of 9 neighborhood self-organized groups established each year. From 2015 to 2019, the growth of these self-organized groups gradually slowed down, with an average of 5 neighborhood self-organized groups established each year.

Number of Neighborhood Self-Organized Groups Established Annually.

Among the leaders of self-organized groups who were interviewed, most are elderly people, over 60 years old. The leaders are basically the first-generation members for the self-organized groups. The characteristics of those well-functioning and active neighborhood self-organized groups include: the leader is a caring person; the leader’s family members are supportive of his or her work, etc. Related challenges for the self-organized groups include the following: severely paralyzed people and people with disabilities with mobility difficulties cannot go out of their homes to participate in group activities; the deaf people have little willingness to participate because they can’t communicate; most young people with disabilities are unwilling to participate; there may be no successor to continue the work of the leader, etc.

Differences in the composition of ordinary people and people with disabilities as leaders of these self-organized groups were observed across the sub-districts. The situation in J street was compared with other streets in the same districts, and it was found that: there are 51 self-organized groups in J Street. The leaders of 28 of these 51 self-organized groups in J Street were surveyed in the first round of this study. Among these self-organized groups, 80.4% (41) of these leaders are people with disabilities. According to the basic data obtained by the W District Disabled Persons’ Federation, 45.0% (140) of the leaders of self-organized groups are people with disabilities. The proportion of people with disabilities as leaders of the self-organized groups is much higher than the average percentage across the whole W district. Most of the leaders have involved in the operation of the self-organized groups for a long period of time, indicating that the mutual-support service network for people with disabilities in some of these sub-districts in W district is relatively stable overtime.

As mentioned above, collective co-production required all residents to reduce their out-goings, and some residents were forcibly isolated, which brought various difficulties to the lives of people with disabilities. Under this circumstance, the members of the self-organized groups provided necessary services actively to make up for the vacancy of the formal service provision system. From the perspective of co-production, these mutual assistance behaviors can be seen as a sort of group co-production that is concerned about the benefits of people with disabilities mainly and can resolve the unintended consequences caused by collective co-production. According to the interviews and observation, there are mainly four types of services provided by the self-organized groups, among which the first two types are more commonly offered, while others are less frequently offered (see Fig. 3).

Proportion of Services Provided by Self-Organized Groups.

The first type of service, which was provided by 77.0% of interviewed self-organized groups, is to meet the living and epidemic control needs of people with disabilities during epidemic prevention and control period. For example, some members of self-organized groups carried out disinfection activities in society. The elevators, corridors, fitness equipment, and doorknobs in the public areas of each community were wiped and disinfected several times every day to control the epidemic. They also took the initiative to buy masks for people with disabilities with mobility problems. Some self-organized groups invited doctors to share knowledge and information about epidemic prevention and control in February 2020. One volunteer with vision disability discussed this in a brief working report: “I am an ordinary resident living in this community. Now the epidemic situation in the country is severe. This voluntary service is nothing but what I should do.”

In addition to epidemic prevention and control services, self-organized groups also paid close attention to the living needs of people with disabilities. Some members of the self-organized groups performed haircuts for about 70 elderly and people with disabilities in nursing homes. One member of a voluntary group shared: “Although I am a people with disabilities, I have taught myself to have a haircut and become a useful person. I found pleasure in helping others”. Another voluntary group member also shared: “Community workers were busy with epidemic prevention and even had no time to rest during the Spring Festival and weekends. I helped to cut their hair to lighten their burden.”

When returning into a normal period after reopening in May 2020, the self-organized groups began to hold more in-person activities, such as lectures on epidemic prevention and health knowledge, sharing stress management skills during home quarantine, and emotional support during the epidemic, etc. In J street, photo-taking competitions about volunteering and pandemic control have been held by the local government, publicizing the stories of volunteers participating in epidemic prevention and control. 53 participants, including 36 people with disabilities, 19 community workers for people with disabilities, and 8 volunteers for people with disabilities have participated in this competition. One self-organized group also organized paper-cutting activities among its group members.

The second type of service is provided to people with disabilities who face great difficulties during the epidemic, such as purchasing medicine and psychological consultation. The survey in this study shows 79.0% of interviewed self-organized groups provided this type of service. One leader shared that 14 out of 104 people with disabilities have mental problems in their community, so she tried to understand their situation and collected the needs of these people. It’s important for people with mental problems to take medicine regularly, so some volunteers helped to purchase medicine for these people during the pandemic. Some volunteers from another neighborhood self-organized group came to one person with disabilities’ home to clean and disinfect indoors. This person has moderate limb disabilities and lives alone. The volunteers also consulted community doctors many times to learn nursing knowledge and took a good care of him during the epidemic. These measures have effectively ensured this person’s health during that period. Another representative case is a person with disabilities with mental problems who suspected that he had Covid-19 and decided to go to Wuhan, the epicenter of the epidemic break, to see a doctor. After being stopped by his family, he threatened them by jumping off the building. One self-organized group member helped keep his mood cooling down and then invited him to do straw-weaving activities in the neighborhood self-organized group. After several times of communication, his mood gradually stabilized.

The third type of service is to deliver food and meals to people with disabilities who were under self-quarantine. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the Chinese government has implemented a strict quarantine policy. According to the policy, people coming from other provinces and cities have to self-quarantine for 14 days before being allowed to leave their residential places. This has brought great troubles to some people with disabilities. To alleviate this problem, 26.0% of interviewed self-organized groups provided food and meals for them. For example, there was one person with disabilities who came back from other cities during the epidemic and needed to be isolated at home. What made his case worse is that he lived alone and had no family to rely on. When the members of the self-organized group in the same neighborhood knew this, they delivered some daily necessities to his house. Another person with disabilities who has four-level physical disabilities and lives in the community, made some local special food for him when he was under quarantine. This kind of service was not only beneficial for people with disabilities to take the initiative to self-isolate and guarantee the epidemic prevention needs, but also beneficial for themselves to keep connection with the community (and society).

The fourth type of service is to donate money and goods to help others. The first three services are directly provided by the disabled people. But considering that some disabled people are inconvenient to move, some mutual assistances are realized by donations. The survey shows that 31.0% of interviewed self-organized groups helped people in trouble through donations. A brief working report by the Disabled Persons’ Federation recorded one story. A physically disabled person, who has no children, struggled to live alone. But he still donated 200 Chinese yuan to the local community for helping prevent and control the epidemic. He said: “Since the outbreak of the epidemic, I have been paying attention to all kinds of reports on the front line, and I was deeply moved to see doctors, police and community workers fighting in the front line of fighting the epidemic. Ordinarily, I am taken care of by the state and the community, and now I am doing my part.” The leader of one voluntary group also shared: “I try my best to do what I should do within my ability to help others.”

Group co-production through self-organized groups for people with disabilities was fulfilled through online and offline approaches. According to the interviews, 90.0% of self-organized groups leaders mentioned that they interacted with others through phone calls and social network platforms such as WeChat, while 56.0% of them mentioned they interacted with others by conducting home visits. What caused this difference is the ability to cope with the digital divide among different types of people with disabilities, as the leader of one self-organized group shared: “Different types of persons with disabilities have different situations.”

Optimistic young people facing physical challenges were more likely to seek living assistance and emotional support online. Many members of self-organized groups shared with us that they used WeChat. One neighborhood self-organized group leader shared: “We have a WeChat group that teaches persons with disabilities to do straw weaving and aerobic exercises.” Another self-organized group leader shared: “Talking with each other in the WeChat group is convenient and relaxing for us.” A self-organized group held online singing activities, which attracted many people with disabilities and their families to participate. There was also a self-organized group to carry out online fitness activities, and everyone could exercise together through video chat. These activities not only release the pressure of people with disabilities, but also promote the friendship among them.

Although some studies have shown that people with disabilities are more likely to participate in co-production with the advance of information technology (Clark et al., 2013), the digital divide is also a common problem for some marginally disabled people. As government official C in W district shared: “Many of our persons with disabilities are elderly people. Among the 2,000-some persons with disabilities, more than 1, 500 are elderly.” These people may find it difficult to adapt themselves to online communication. Furthermore, other people with disabilities, such as individuals with intellectual disability and blind people were also stuck in the same challenge. Nevertheless, the members of self-organized groups tried their best to provide both in-person and online services to people with disabilities during the epidemic control period.

In the literature discussing co-production in epidemic situation, there are mainly two types of co-production. On the one hand, compliance to and abidance with government regulations, such as self-quarantine and wearing masks, is deemed as a sort of collective co-production to control the spread of virus. On the other, delivering necessary services to the public, such as psychological counseling, and sending disaster relief supplies, is a sort of group co-production. In the case of social service provision for people with disabilities in Shanghai during the pandemic, it’s found that pre-pandemic services offered by government-organized nonprofit organizations and independent nonprofit organizations were discontinued by the city-wide collective co-production requirements, while self-organized groups as a group co-production mechanism kept resilient to deliver necessary services to people with disabilities. Specifically, through both online and offline approaches, these informal self-organized groups provided four types of material and counseling services to different types of people with disabilities and even the non-disabled. By further classifying the types of co-production, it’s found that collective co-production has brought unintended secondary harms to society, especially to some vulnerable groups, while group co-production could help resolve the problem and restore resilience of the social service provision system for people with disabilities.

This study contributes to the literature on self-organization and co-production. By analyzing the changes of the service provision system for people with disabilities in Shanghai before and after the Covid-19 pandemic, a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between collective co-production, group co-production and service resilience was revealed. The secret to service resilience is that the group co-production mechanism separates actual behaviors from formal structures, making the service provision more loose coupling.

The state and family are always the main actors in the service delivery system for people with disabilities in China. The family is deeply influenced by Confucianism and emphasizes the ethical responsibility of family members to take care of people with disabilities (Pan and Ye, 2015). The state also actively fulfills its duties to citizens by promulgating the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Protection of Disabled Persons and distributing welfare benefits, such as living allowance to people with disabilities in difficulty, nursing allowance for severely people with disabilities, and employment security fund for people with disabilities. Considering the service network composed of government and government-led nonprofit organizations mentioned above, it also shows that the state attaches great importance to them. Once people with disabilities rely too much upon these formal organizations and become more tight coupling, it will easily lead to welfare dependency caused by the lack of ability of them. The emergence of self-organized groups, besides the state and families, provides an alternative way to provide services for people with disabilities. As a result, the service provision system for people with disabilities becomes more resilient in this supplementary relationship, especially during a public health crisis.

This study also contributes to the co-production literature by focusing on the interaction between different types of nonprofits in the process of co-production. Much evidence shows that the third sector plays an essential role in co-production of social services (Osborne and McLaughlin, 2004; McMullin, 2021). Existing studies focus more on the role of nonprofits in co-production, generally from service delivery to planning (Brandsen and Victor, 2006; Martin, 2011; Strokosch and Osborne, 2017). However, just as Ostrom stated, the service provision system is polycentric with many choices of producer (Ostrom, 1999, 2009, 2010; Alford, 2014). The third sector also consists of two types of organization, including formal nonprofit organizations with paid staff and informal grassroots associations initiated by citizens (Salamon and Anheier, 1992; Smith, 1997). Previous studies have not paid enough attention to different nonprofits’ respective characteristics and the interaction between them in the process of co-production, but this paper fills this gap.

Moreover, this study indicates that group co-production may serve as a possible way to solve the paradox on participation of vulnerable groups in co-production that was revealed by existing research. While some insist that equity and effectiveness of social services can be promoted by co-production (Jakobsen and Andersen, 2013; Strokosch and Osborne, 2017), others hold that abusing resources, neglecting differences between people and other reasons may lead to public value failure in the co-production process (Percy, 1987; Williams et al., 2016). We argue that differentiating different types of co-production, for instance collective co-production and group co-production, is probably another way to replay this paradox.

The policy implication of this study is that the government should attach great importance to the development of self-organized groups, especially those that are formalized and relatively stable. In view of the increasing complexity and severity of various emergencies faced by the current society, the difficulty for the government to deal with them alone has increased significantly, and self-organized groups as a force that cannot be ignored has shown a powerful supporting role in times of crisis. Taking China as an example, the Wuhan Hotel Support Alliance, which was quickly established during the Wuhan epidemic in January 2020, provided valuable accommodation and commuting services for front-line medical staff (Zhao et al., 2022) and the Life-Saving Document which emerged in the rainstorm in Zhengzhou in July 2021, effectively conveyed the rescue information and demonstrated the unique value of self-organized groups in emergency management and disaster response.

However, it is worth noting that these emergency self-organized groups are often born in a risk emergency, and their survival is highly dependent on the existence of specific crises. Once the crisis is alleviated, their vitality is also weakened, and the continuity and influence of cooperative production are limited. Therefore, the government should pay attention to the self-organized groups that have a solid operating foundation and can continue to play a role, such as the self-organized groups for people with disabilities mentioned in this study. They are not only important subjects to maintain service resilience, but also valuable resources to cope with future uncertain challenges.

In order to strengthen the sustainability and institutionalization of this kind of self-organized groups, the government can take a series of policy measures: providing necessary resources and financial support; decentralizing relevant functions appropriately and giving self-organized groups more space to participate in social governance; relaxing the threshold of self-organized groups and encouraging the development of diversified and multi-type self-organized groups; commending outstanding volunteers and encouraging the public to learn; building an interactive communication platform for information sharing and experience exchange.

Nonetheless, this study also has two shortcomings: first, this is a single case study that only focuses the relationship between group co-production and collective co-production, and did not analyze the relationship between other types of co-production. For example, in other cases, there may be a conflicting relationship between group co-production and individual co-production. In addition, this study only found that group co-production could mitigate or neutralize the negative impacts of collective co-production, but it’s unable to analyze and investigate the factors that cause this phenomenon completely. These weaknesses show the need for further studies.

The authors confirm that all data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article. Additional data related to this study can be found in the Supplementary Information submitted with this article.

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This study has been supported by grants funded by the National Social Science Foundation of China [Grant No. 17CZZ029] and by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant No. 72404243]. This study is also supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

School of Government, East China University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai, China

Ting Zhao & Dongsheng Xu

School of International and Public Affairs, China Institute for Urban Governance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

Junao Yuan

School of Public Affairs, Academy of Social Governance, Institute for Common Prosperity and Development, Center of Social Welfare and Governance, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

Zhongsheng Wu

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Conceptualization: ZW, TZ; Project administration: TZ, JY; Supervision: ZW, TZ; Data collection: TZ, JY, DX; Data Analysis: TZ, JY, DX; Methodology: ZW, TZ; Writing original draft: ZW, TZ, JY; Writing-review & editing: ZW, TZ, JY. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Correspondence to Zhongsheng Wu.

The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethical approval was exempted by the institution of the first author. Name of the approval body: School of Government at East China University of Political Science and Law (ECUPSL). Confirmation: all research was performed in accordance with relevant guidelines at ECUPSL when human subjects are involved. Date of Exemption: October 15, 2020 to August 25, 2021, the period for data collection of this study. Reasons for exemption: The School of Government at East China University of Political Science and Law (ECUPSL) has relevant guidelines regarding ethical issues in conducting research, but have not established ethical committees so far. Thus, ethical approval was exempted by both the university and the school for data collection in this study. Supporting information: the School of Government at ECUPSL provided a certificate with official seal, confirming the exemption of ethical approval for this study.

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Zhao, T., Yuan, J., Wu, Z. et al. Resolving the unintended consequences of collective co-production through group co-production: a case study in Shanghai. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11, 1505 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-04063-5

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