Abstract: 【Purpose/significance】As an institutional tool to guarantee the exercise of government power and safeguard the rights and interests of citizens, the diffusion process of policies reflects the dynamic dispersion of political practices, and the disclosure of infor⁃ mation on emergencies has become an important part of social governance, exploring the policy diffusion paths driven by the timeliness and transparency of governmental disclosure of information on emergencies, and providing academic guidance for governments at all levels to improve the adoption and iteration of policies.【Method/process】Based on the citation relationship of policy texts, we con⁃ structed a central-provincial-municipal-district-county policy diffusion hierarchical network, analyzed the policy texts of each region from the dimensions of policy objectives and policy tools, and deeply explored the effect of social factors on their role. We analyze the similarity of the policy texts from the dimensions of policy objectives and policy tools, and explore in depth the effect of social factors on their roles.【Result/conclusion】Vertical diffusion of centralized policies is significant, while diffusion between different local levels is insufficient; the degree of policy adoption varies across localities in response to policy objectives and types of emergencies; local subjects with higher levels of social development are more likely to engage in learning-based iterative updating and to be more original in their policy formulation.【Innovation/limitation】A vertical perspective clarifies the diffusion mechanism of policies from the central to the local level and explores the moderating role of social factors on local policy innovations. Due to the limited number of critical in⁃ cident policy releases, the follow-up study can incorporate newly released policies to enrich the content of the study, thereby broaden⁃ ing the scope of application of the findings.