title: Recent Surge in Public Interest in Transportation: Sentiment Analysis of
    Baidu Apollo Go Using Weibo Data
summary: Urban mobility and transportation systems have been profoundly transformed by
  the advancement of autonomous vehicle technologies. Baidu Apollo Go, a pioneer
  robotaxi service from the Chinese tech giant Baidu, has recently been widely
  deployed in major cities like Beijing and Wuhan, sparking increased
  conversation and offering a glimpse into the future of urban mobility.
    This study investigates public attitudes towards Apollo Go across China using
  Sentiment Analysis with a hybrid BERT model on 36,096 Weibo posts from January
  to July 2024. The analysis shows that 89.56\% of posts related to Apollo Go are
  clustered in July. From January to July, public sentiment was mostly positive,
  but negative comments began to rise after it became a hot topic on July 21.
    Spatial analysis indicates a strong correlation between provinces with high
  discussion intensity and those where Apollo Go operates. Initially, Hubei and
  Guangdong dominated online posting volume, but by July, Guangdong, Beijing, and
  international regions had overtaken Hubei. Attitudes varied significantly among
  provinces, with Xinjiang and Qinghai showing optimism and Tibet and Gansu
  expressing concerns about the impact on traditional taxi services.
    Sentiment analysis revealed that positive comments focused on technology
  applications and personal experiences, while negative comments centered on job
  displacement and safety concerns. In summary, this study highlights the
  divergence in public perceptions of autonomous ride-hailing services, providing
  valuable insights for planners, policymakers, and service providers. The model
  is published on Hugging Face at
  https://huggingface.co/wsqstar/bert-finetuned-weibo-luobokuaipao and the
  repository on GitHub at https://github.com/GIStudio/trb2024.
paper_authors._id: 66c5a729a1b181697e714b5e
paper_authors.name: Shiqi Wang
paper_authors.status: claimed_verified
paper_authors.statusLastChangedAt: 2024-08-22T19:50:38.877Z
paper_authors._id: 659d2bdf28747f92e6fbba1b
paper_authors.avatarUrl: /avatars/c08af43b652b7dff9bade17ec71e9fd5.svg
paper_authors.fullname: Shiqi Wang
paper_authors.type: user
paper_authors.user: wsqstar
paper_authors._id: 66c5a729a1b181697e714b5f
paper_authors.name: Zhouye Zhao
paper_authors._id: 66c5a729a1b181697e714b60
paper_authors.name: Yuhang Xie
paper_authors._id: 66c5a729a1b181697e714b61
paper_authors.name: Mingchuan Ma
paper_authors._id: 66c5a729a1b181697e714b62
paper_authors.name: Zirui Chen
paper_authors._id: 66c5a729a1b181697e714b63
paper_authors.name: Zeyu Wang
paper_authors._id: 66c5a729a1b181697e714b64
paper_authors.name: Bohao Su
paper_authors.status: extracted_pending
paper_authors.statusLastChangedAt: 2024-09-28T11:42:14.525Z
paper_authors._id: 66f429ac702fa94e39e06f12
paper_authors.avatarUrl: /avatars/c79ed63825846c4722fc10aaf79046e1.svg
paper_authors.fullname: Stephen SU
paper_authors.type: user
paper_authors.user: stephen202409
paper_authors._id: 66c5a729a1b181697e714b65
paper_authors.name: Wenrui Xu
paper_authors._id: 66c5a729a1b181697e714b66
paper_authors.name: Tianyi Li
paper_title: Recent Surge in Public Interest in Transportation: Sentiment Analysis of
    Baidu Apollo Go Using Weibo Data
paper_summary: Urban mobility and transportation systems have been profoundly transformed by
  the advancement of autonomous vehicle technologies. Baidu Apollo Go, a pioneer
  robotaxi service from the Chinese tech giant Baidu, has recently been widely
  deployed in major cities like Beijing and Wuhan, sparking increased
  conversation and offering a glimpse into the future of urban mobility.
    This study investigates public attitudes towards Apollo Go across China using
  Sentiment Analysis with a hybrid BERT model on 36,096 Weibo posts from January
  to July 2024. The analysis shows that 89.56\% of posts related to Apollo Go are
  clustered in July. From January to July, public sentiment was mostly positive,
  but negative comments began to rise after it became a hot topic on July 21.
    Spatial analysis indicates a strong correlation between provinces with high
  discussion intensity and those where Apollo Go operates. Initially, Hubei and
  Guangdong dominated online posting volume, but by July, Guangdong, Beijing, and
  international regions had overtaken Hubei. Attitudes varied significantly among
  provinces, with Xinjiang and Qinghai showing optimism and Tibet and Gansu
  expressing concerns about the impact on traditional taxi services.
    Sentiment analysis revealed that positive comments focused on technology
  applications and personal experiences, while negative comments centered on job
  displacement and safety concerns. In summary, this study highlights the
  divergence in public perceptions of autonomous ride-hailing services, providing
  valuable insights for planners, policymakers, and service providers. The model
  is published on Hugging Face at
  https://huggingface.co/wsqstar/bert-finetuned-weibo-luobokuaipao and the
  repository on GitHub at https://github.com/GIStudio/trb2024.
paper_ai_summary: This study analyzes public sentiment towards Baidu Apollo Go using a hybrid BERT model, revealing positive attitudes with increasing negative comments due to job displacement and safety concerns.
paper_ai_keywords: sentiment analysis hybrid BERT model Weibo posts autonomous ride-hailing services job displacement safety concerns