Public attention and psychological trends towards waste reduction: A large-scale data analysis based on social media

Abstract

In the digital era, using social media big data to capture the true views and psychological trends shown by the public regarding waste reduction could considerably improve the formulation of targeted waste reduction policies and guide residents to participate in environmental governance from the source side. This study used big data mining technology to trawl 617,771 pieces of waste reduction text from a typical social media site (Sina Microblog). A machine learning algorithm model was used to identify the psychological and cognitive focus of the public and their preferences based on large-scale text data. The temporal and spatial differences in public attention trends, hot topic trends, and sentiment trends were also investigated. The results showed that the public attention level was related to the release of policies by government and that public attention in the southeast coastal areas was higher than that in the northwest inland areas. Moreover, waste reduction had a “working attribute” because the public paid more attention to waste reduction during working hours (i.e., 9:00–12:00 and 15:00–18:00) than during leisure hours. In terms of individual heterogeneity, males were initiators of the topic, whereas females were followers. In particular, participation by young people in waste reduction discussions was higher than for other groups. The topic analysis showed that public attention followed a cooperative construction pattern that had multiple entities, including the individual, community, and government. Overall, the public sentiment score towards waste reduction increased year by year during the study period, with positive sentiment posts accounting for over 70% of the total number of blog posts, and that the vast majority of residents had a positive attitude towards waste reduction. This study expanded current research knowledge by exploring the public attitude response to waste reduction from a social media perspective. The study will help the government to effectively intervene in public behavior tendencies toward waste reduction from the psychological perspective and provided important implications about how the government can enhance its use of social media to effectively guide public opinion and improve policies.