Abstract
The salience of social risks and the incidence of various crises in China have induced widespread
concerns among urban residents. Encountering frequent risks places higher demands on the cognition
of urban residents. The concept of safety cognition capability is defined within the context of urban
residents' daily life, and measurement instruments are developed and tested to lay the foundation for
grasping the current safety cognition capability of urban residents and conducting further research. In
this paper, the five-dimensional structure of urban residents' safety cognition capability (URSCC)
was proposed by using the grounded theory method to sort out the interview transcript of interviews
with 30 urban residents, and a total of 38-item URSCC scales in four domains - public health, natural
disasters, accidents, and social security - were designed and used for surveys conducted in China.
The results show that the scale can be used as a valid tool to measure the URSCC, and it can help
city managers to better understand the safety needs of residents, as well as monitor the effectiveness
of policy implementation.
 

Urban residents, Safety cognition capability, Conceptual structure, Scale development, Qualitative analysis