Public attention and sentiment of recycled water: Evidence from social media text mining in China

Abstract

Recycled water holds great promise for relieving pressure on water resources, but its utilization rate is low due to low public willingness to accept it in China. According to technology acceptance theory, the public’s attention and sentiment orientation have a strong influence on acceptance-behavior toward something new. Therefore, in this study, text-mining analysis is used to analyze social media text data to explore the current status, temporal and spatial trends of public attention, sentiment orientation, and focus on recycled water in China. The behavior over the past six years of Weibo users in 34 provincial-level administrative regions was analyzed, and the results show the following. Although public attention has increased significantly as a result of government actions, it is still at a low level. Residents pay more attention to recycled water in water-scarce and high-economic-development areas than others. In addition, the majority of the Chinese public holds positive feelings about recycled water. However, there is widespread disgust at the thought of recycled wastewater, and the public’s concerns about its safety cannot be ignored.