Objective  To explore the situation and influencing factors of emergency literacy among community residents in Guangdong province for promoting emergency literacy and response capability of the population.

  Methods  Using stratified multi-stage cluster sampling, we carried out a household survey among 811 urban and rural adult residents (> 18 years) selected from three districts in Guangzhou municipality and one district in Foshan municipality of Guangdong province from September to October in 2015. A self designed questionnaire was used to collect relevant information; chi square test and logistic regression analysis were adopted in statistical analyses.

  Results  The participants′ average score for overall emergency literacy was 0.74 ± 0.17; the average domain scores were 0.89 ± 0.21, 0.78 ± 0.26, 0.67 ± 0.30, and 0.61 ± 0.28 for emergency knowledge about fire escape, public health event, social security incident, and earthquake, respectively. The emergency literacy was significantly higher among the participants with the education of college and above, purchasing personal accident insurance, residing in a high-rise building with elevator, being willing to have education program on emergency response knowledge and skill, being involved in an emergency response drill or training, with a higher sense of community attachment, taking part in emergency response education programs in community frequently, and acquiring information on emergency response knowledge through public media/television/interment (P < 0.05 for all). The results of multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed following promoting factors among the participants: with the education of college and above (odds ratio OR = 2.768), acquiring emergency response knowledge through interment (OR = 1.767), acquiring emergency response knowledge through public media (OR = 1.552) , with the cognition on the necessity for taking part in education programs on emergency response knowledge (OR = 1.832), and with a sense of community attachment (OR = 1.669).

  Conclusion  The emergency knowledge is at an upper-middle level among community adult residents in Guangdong province. Relevant governmental departments should promote various targeted education programs in the public to increase emergency response literacy and capability among the residents.