Purpose Governments regularly release emergency preparedness information and communication to households because household preparedness can mitigate global supply chain management disruptions due to crises. Such information can only help if households interpret it as intended and act as suggested. The purpose is to explore the Swedish households’ sensemaking of emergency information and the impact on supply chain preparedness.

Design/methodology/approach The research adopts an inductive approach to qualitative data. We collect and analyze 75 interviews from 51 Swedish households in three waves (2019, 2021, 2022) corresponding to recent supply chain disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops. This allows us to explore the households’ understanding of emergency preparedness information and how it affects their actions.

Findings The findings indicate that not all crises trigger equal sensemaking of emergency preparedness information. We find several distinct groups of households and label these early adopters and laggards respectively and discuss how this affects global supply chains. Good crisis communication can reduce real demand when a crisis happens by reducing peaks in demand. However, some false demand is still created, and some people are entirely unaffected by the crisis communication.

Research limitations/implications The research is based on a focused sample of interviewees. Future research can broaden the sample to different groups of respondents.

Original/value The paper contributes to the literature about emergency preparedness and global supply chains by suggesting that household sensemaking and perceptions of emergency preparedness communication have real effects by reducing demand peaks. We then connect this to global supply chains and how are affected by the crises