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Exploring public opinions on climate change policy in "Big Data Era"—A case study of the European Union Emission Trading System (EU-ETS) based on Twitter

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  • Wei, Yigang
  • Gong, Ping
  • Zhang, Jianhong
  • Wang, Li

Abstract

Public awareness has an important effect on the legislation and implementation of climate change policies. Against the backdrop of the "Big Data Era," social media is an appealing and promising tool for a timely and complete understanding of public perception and attitudes towards climate policies. This paper examines the public's spontaneous attention and awareness about carbon emissions trading (ETS). Tweets related to the EU-ETS, published between 2008 and 2019, were collected for multi-dimensional analysis. Empirical results show several important findings. First, public attention on the EU-ETS has increased significantly since 2011. Second, government officials and industry practitioners have a stronger influence in the discussions than the public and industrial enterprises. Third, topic followers mostly gathered in Belgium (16.65%), the UK (11.6%), and some non-regulated countries like the US and Australia. Fourth, the public mainly focused on the policies and legislation, allowance price, and allocation. The innovation of this study rests in the development of a social media data-based research framework to examine the public's cognition of climate policies, which integrates the advantages of public social media, social network analysis, and text topic analysis. This study provides comprehensive analysis and support for climate policy implementation and public acceptance improvement.

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  • Wei, Yigang & Gong, Ping & Zhang, Jianhong & Wang, Li, 2021. "Exploring public opinions on climate change policy in "Big Data Era"—A case study of the European Union Emission Trading System (EU-ETS) based on Twitter," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:158:y:2021:i:c:s0301421521004298
    DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2021.112559
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    2. Huang, Wenyang & Wang, Huiwen & Qin, Haotong & Wei, Yigang & Chevallier, Julien, 2022. "Convolutional neural network forecasting of European Union allowances futures using a novel unconstrained transformation method," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    3. Debnath, R. & Bardhan, R. & Mohaddes, K. & Shah, D. U. & Ramage, M. H. & Alvarez, R. M., 2022. "People-centric Emission Reduction in Buildings: A Data-driven and Network Topology-based Investigation," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2202, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    4. Huang, Wenyang & Zhao, Jianyu & Wang, Xiaokang, 2024. "Model-driven multimodal LSTM-CNN for unbiased structural forecasting of European Union allowances open-high-low-close price," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    5. Liu, Tao & Guan, Xinyue & Wei, Yigang & Xue, Shan & Xu, Liang, 2023. "Impact of economic policy uncertainty on the volatility of China's emission trading scheme pilots," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    6. Zhang, Jiekuan, 2023. "Emissions trading scheme and energy consumption and output structure: Evidence from China," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 219(P1).
    7. Wei, Yigang & Li, Yan & Wang, Zhicheng, 2022. "Multiple price bubbles in global major emission trading schemes: Evidence from European Union, New Zealand, South Korea and China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    8. Chenghao Yang & Tongtong Liu, 2022. "Social Media Data in Urban Design and Landscape Research: A Comprehensive Literature Review," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-22, October.
    9. Sun, Yunpeng & Jia, Ruoya & Razzaq, Asif & Bao, Qun, 2024. "Social network platforms and climate change in China: Evidence from TikTok," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    10. Fang Dong & Chengdong Shi & Weitong Yu, 2022. "Coordinated Decision-Making in Embedded Supply Chain from a Sustainable Development Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-19, December.
    11. Huang, Wenyang & Wang, Huiwen & Wei, Yigang, 2023. "Identifying the determinants of European carbon allowances prices: A novel robust partial least squares method for open-high-low-close data," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    12. Yadu Zhang & Yiteng Zhang & Zuoren Sun, 2023. "The Impact of Carbon Emission Trading Policy on Enterprise ESG Performance: Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(10), pages 1-27, May.

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