Public Responses to Air Pollution in Shandong Province Using the Online Complaint Data

Abstract

As air users, the public is also participants in air pollution control and important evaluators of environmental protection. Therefore, understanding the public perception and response to air pollution is an essential part of improving air governance. This study proposed an analytical framework for public response to air pollution based on online complaint data and sentiment analysis. In the proposed framework, the emotional dictionary of air pollution was firstly constructed using microblog data and complaint data. Secondly, the emotional dictionary of air pollution and the sentiment analysis method were used to calculate public complaints’ emotional intensity. Besides, the spatial and temporal characteristics of air pollution complaint data and public emotional intensity, the complaints content, and their correlation with PM2.5 (particulate matters smaller than 2.5 micrometers) and PM10 were analyzed using address matching, spatial analysis, and word cloud analysis. Finally, the proposed framework was applied to 13,469 air pollution complaint data in Shandong Province from 2012 to 2018. The obtained results indicated that: the public was mainly complaining about the exhaust gas emissions from enterprises and factories. Spatially, the geographical center of complaint data was located in the inland industrial urban agglomeration of Shandong Province. Correlatively, air pollution complaints’ negative emotional intensity was significantly negatively correlated with PM2.5 (−0.73). Moreover, the number of public complaints about air pollution and the intensity of negative emotions also decreased with improved air quality in Shandong Province in recent years.