Dynamic Influence of Network Public Opinions on Price Fluctuation of Small Agricultural Products Based on NLP-TVP-VAR Model—Taking Garlic as an Example

Abstract

In recent years, the price of small agricultural products has both plummeted and skyrocketed, which has a great impact on people’s lives. Studying the factors affecting the price fluctuation of small agricultural products is of great significance for stabilizing their price. With the development and application of social media, farmers and consumers are more greatly influenced by online public opinion, resulting in irrational planting behavior or purchasing behavior, which has a complex impact on the price of small agricultural products. Taking garlic as an example, we crawled through network public opinions about garlic price from January 2015 to December 2020 using web crawler technology. Then, the network public opinions were quantified using a natural language processing and time-varying parameter vector autoregression (NLP-TVP-VAR) model to empirically analyze their dynamic influence on garlic price fluctuation. It was found that both public attitude and public attention have a short-term influence on garlic price fluctuation, and the influences of each differ according to direction, intensity and timing. The influence of public attitude on garlic price fluctuation is positive, while the influence of public attention on garlic price fluctuation is largely negative. The influence intensity of public attitude is stronger than of public attention on garlic price fluctuation. The influence of public attitude on garlic price fluctuation shows a trend of intensifying, while that of public attention has been weaker than in previous years. In addition, based on the results of our study, we present some recommendations for improving the comprehensive information platform and price fluctuation early warning system for the whole industry chain of small agricultural products.