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Explore public concerns about environmental protection on Sina Weibo: evidence from text mining

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Abstract

The increasingly serious problem of ecological environmental pollution warns the importance of human environmental protection behavior. However, public attention to environmental protection plays an important role in solving environmental problems. Therefore, in order to explore the environmental concerns of Chinese residents, the trends in time and space, the relationship between online retweets, and the extraction of environmental concerns, this study analyzed the data of Sina Weibo users and their comments on related posts. At the same time, we used the text mining analysis method to analyze the social media text data, and the results are as follows. In that analysis of concern about environmental protection, women show a stronger attitude and willingness to protect the environment than men, and the public in economically developed areas is more concerned. In order to further investigate the public’s environmental concerns, this study also utilized the PageRank algorithm to further study the forwarding relationships between users. The study found that celebrities and some good media organizations can attract environmental attention. Finally, we use pyLDAvis technology to visualize and analyze popular environmental themes and propose reasonable countermeasures and suggestions to enhance public environmental awareness based on the research results.

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Data availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information files.

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Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to Professor Yang. He gave me a lot of useful and constructive suggestions in my thesis. His professional and academic knowledge taught me how to do research. In addition, I would like to thank all the authors for their helpful discussion.

Funding

This research was funded by the Anhui Provincial Philosophy and Social Science Planning General Program, grant number AHSKY 2017 D70; the Undergraduate Quality Engineering Anhui Province Key Teaching and Research Project, grant number 2020JYXM1410; and the National College Student Innovation Training Program, grant number 202110371025, 202210371007, G02210371007.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics, Fuyang Normal University, Fuyang, 236037, China

    Lifeng Yang

  2. School of Business, Fuyang Normal University, Fuyang, 236037, China

    Shaotong Wu

  3. School of Urban Economics and Management, Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Beijing, 100000, China

    Guangxia Li

  4. School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100000, China

    Yunyun Yuan

Authors
  1. Lifeng Yang
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  2. Shaotong Wu
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  3. Guangxia Li
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  4. Yunyun Yuan
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Contributions

Conceptualization and formal analysis: Guangxia Li and Lifeng Yang; methodology: Yunyun Yuan and Shaotong Wu; software analysis and the writing—original draft preparation: Guangxia Li; validation: Guangxia Li and Shaotong Wu; investigation: Lifeng Yang and Shaotong Wu; writing—review and editing: Guangxia Li, Lifeng Yang and Yunyun Yuan; supervision: Yunyun Yuan; project administration and funding acquisition: Lifeng Yang. All authors have read and agreed on the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Guangxia Li.

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Yang, ., Wu, S., Li, G. et al. Explore public concerns about environmental protection on Sina Weibo: evidence from text mining. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 104067–104085 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-29757-2

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