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Hot in Twitter: Assessing the emotional impacts of wildfires with sentiment analysis

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  • Loureiro, Maria L.
  • Alló, Maria
  • Coello, Pablo

Abstract

Social media generates a significant amount of information in terms of perceptions, emotions, and sentiments. We present an economic analysis using the information provided by Twitter messages, describing impressions and reactions to wildfires occurring in Spain and Portugal. We use natural language processing techniques to analyze this text information. We generate a hedonometer estimate on how sentiments about wildfires vary with exposure, measured via Euclidean distance from the catastrophic event, and air quality. We find that direct exposure to wildfires significantly decreases the expressed sentiment score and increases the expressions of fear and political discontent (protest). Economic valuation of these losses has been computed to be between 1.49€–3.50€/year/Kilometer of distance to the closest active fire. Welfare losses in terms of air quality have been computed as 4.43€–6.59€/day of exposure.

Suggested Citation

  • Loureiro, Maria L. & Alló, Maria & Coello, Pablo, 2022. "Hot in Twitter: Assessing the emotional impacts of wildfires with sentiment analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:200:y:2022:i:c:s0921800922001641
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107502
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    Cited by:

    1. Bram De Rock & Florine Le Henaff, 2023. "Walk the Talk: Measuring Green Preferences with Social Media Data," Working Papers ECARES 2023-17, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    2. Gellman, Jacob & Walls, Margaret A. & Wibbenmeyer, Matthew, 2023. "Welfare Losses from Wildfire Smoke: Evidence from Daily Outdoor Recreation Data," RFF Working Paper Series 23-31, Resources for the Future.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Environmental Impacts; Natural Language Processing; Happiness; Hedonometer; Wildfires;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics
    • Q5 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics

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