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There is an assumption in emergency planning that the public will “panic” or refuse to comply in the event of mass decontamination. This assumption has serious implications for how the public will be managed. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors carried out semi-structured interviews with 13 emergency responders, six of whom had experience of incidents involving decontamination. The authors asked them, first, about their experiences of these events and, second, about their expectations for decontamination involving a large crowd. The aim was to explore the extent to which responders perceived non-compliance and anxiety as (crowd) problems during decontamination, and if so, how they felt that they could be addressed.

Responders with experience of decontamination perceived non-compliance and excessive anxiety to be rare, and suggested that orderly behaviour was more common. However, the majority of emergency responders with no experience of decontamination said they expected panic and non-compliance. They therefore emphasised the importance of “controlling”, rather than communicating with, the public.

The authors argue that “control”-based emergency management strategies can impact negatively on the relationship between the public and responders, and hence hinder effective management of an incident. It would therefore be beneficial to provide training for emergency responders on likely public behaviour during incidents involving decontamination.

This research extends previous research by facilitating a detailed understanding of emergency responders’ experiences and perceptions of managing incidents involving decontamination, and showing how these experiences and perceptions can affect the way in which such incidents are managed.

Reports from small‐scale incidents in which decontamination was conducted suggest that a successful communication strategy is vital in order to increase public compliance with, and reduce public anxiety about, decontamination. However, it has not been possible to examine public behaviour during large scale incidents involving decontamination. The aim of the research reported here was to examine the relationship between people's positive perceptions of responding agencies’ communication strategies and relevant outcome variables, such as level of compliance and level of reassurance, in several field exercises involving mass decontamination.

Data were collected using feedback questionnaires completed by simulated casualties, which contained items relating to casualties’ perceptions of the success of responding agencies’ communication strategies, their confidence in emergency responders, and their compliance with the decontamination process. Path analysis was used to examine the relationships between variables.

Results show a significant relationship between responding agencies’ communication strategies, level of public reassurance, and level of public compliance. The relationship between responders’ communication strategies and the outcome variables was partially mediated by public confidence in responders.

Emergency responders should focus on communication with members of the public as a key element of the decontamination process, as failure to do so could result in high levels of anxiety and low levels of compliance among those who are affected.

This research highlights the importance of effective responder communication strategies. Further, findings indicate the value of examining feedback from field exercises in order to facilitate a greater understanding of public experiences of the decontamination process.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the psychological processes involved in spontaneous co-operation by survivors of mass emergencies, and the possible implications this may have for emergency responders.

A qualitative interview study was conducted with 12 survivors and witnesses of the 7 July 2005 London bombings. Data were subjected to thematic analysis.

Spontaneous co-operation amongst survivors often emerged, and this was a function of a common identity that grew out of a sense of shared fate amongst those affected. Some social influence that encouraged co-operation also occurred, and this was dependent upon whether there was a sense of shared identity between source and target of influence.

Evidence was only collected from a sub-set of one incident (7/7), thus limiting possible generalisability of the findings. Further research into comparable situations would provide a better understanding of the processes underlying mutual co-operation and support amongst emergency survivors.

Uninjured bystanders in emergencies can act as “zero-responders”, and so may become a useful resource which can be utilised by the emergency services in mass emergencies.

This is the first paper to explore in detail the social influence processes underlying spontaneous co-operation amongst survivors of emergencies, and will be of use to emergency responders.

Effective communication has been recognised as an important issue for the management of incidents involving decontamination; evidence shows that failure to communicate effectively may result in increased public anxiety and non‐compliance. This paper aims to examine current provision for communicating with members of the public during decontamination, to facilitate the development of improved responder communication strategies.

To examine the current provision for communicating with members of the public, the authors reviewed open source decontamination guidance documents for responders, as well as published reports of emergency preparedness exercises involving decontamination.

The review of decontamination guidance documents showed that specific guidance for professional responders on how to communicate with the public during incidents that involve decontamination could be improved. Similarly, the review of published decontamination exercises shows that a stronger emphasis on communication with members of the public is needed, in addition to the use of exercises to evaluate the effectiveness of communication strategies.

The present research summarises existing evidence relating to how communication strategies employed by responders can shape public responses to decontamination. Analysed alongside current decontamination guidance for emergency responders, this evidence highlights potential gaps in planning for communicating with members of the public during decontamination. It is hoped that this will promote an increased understanding of the importance of communication during these types of incidents, which will in turn facilitate the development of more comprehensive responder communication strategies.

The Pagination of Books is important, as the chief guide to their completeness and order. Early books were not paged, and it is usual to collate them by means of watermarks, catchwords, signatures and other features in order to ascertain their perfection or imperfection.

The aim of this chapter is to investigate the relationship between the uses of budgets with financial performance in start-ups’ business environment. For this reason, an empirical survey was carried out, using a questionnaire in 134 start-up companies, which are based in 10 different European countries. Results show that there is a positive association between the use of budgets for planning, resource allocation and performance evaluation with financial performance. The CEO’s business educational background, as well as CEO’s beliefs about planning, has a strong influence in the use of budgets in start-up firms. We also concluded that there is a positive association between perceived environmental uncertainty (PEU) and the use of budgets for planning and resource allocation and a negative association between PEU and the use of budgets for performance evaluation.

The purpose of this chapter was to deconstruct the underlying contradictions of crowdfunding practices and to show how crowdfunding practitioners develop a schizophrenic use of these contradictions.

The main contradictions of crowdfunding practices are introduced with theoretical references. Then short cases are used to illustrate how crowdfunding practitioners try to cope with these contradictions.

The crowd addresses many contradictions, first because it is a syncretic concept, second because online crowds are still to be proven crowds. In any case, crowdfunding practitioners do their best to take the advantage of these contradictions, and run the risk of falling between two stools.

An attempt to provide an analysis of crowdfunding as a social, and not only economic, phenomenon, to suggest avenues for further critical research on crowdfunding.

The enormous danger of enemy influence in regard to the control and management of the food supply of the country and the great evils attributable to this cause justify us in reproducing the following able article by MR. RONALD MCNEILL, M.P., from the Evening Standard of October 26th:—

This study seeks to examine what theory of crowd psychology is being applied within public order police training in England and Wales and what accounts of crowds, police strategies and tactics subsequently emerge among officers who undertake this training.

The study uses a multi‐method approach including observations of public order training courses, interviews with students and instructors, and the dissemination of questionnaires.

The analysis suggests that a form of crowd theory associated with the work of Gustave Le Bon has become institutionalised within police training. This in turn is leading to a potentially counter‐productive reliance on the undifferentiated use of force when policing crowds.

The study illustrates that such training outcomes not only are counter to the recent developments in evidence, theory and policy but also undermine the police's ability to develop more efficient and effective approaches to policing crowds.

The study provides a systematic review of public order training which demonstrates how crowd theory is used as a rationale and justification for the use of tactics based on undifferentiated force. It makes suggestions for improving police training so that updates in policy and theory can be translated into operational practice.