Attitude of Chinese Public towards Rural Landscape: A text mining study

Rural landscapes play a significant role in rural tourism, attracting tourists and promoting sustainable development in rural areas. Current factors limiting the development of rural landscapes include the lack of a comprehensive indicator system, improper development, and interference with the lives of local residents. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the Chinese public's attention to rural landscapes, this study collected and analyzed Weibo posts related to rural landscapes. We employed web scraping techniques and topic modeling methods on the Sina Weibo platform. The research findings indicate that the level of public attention in China is greatly influenced by policies. The vast majority of the Chinese public holds a positive attitude toward rural landscapes. The local flavor of rural areas is the most interesting factor for the public when exploring rural landscapes. Unreasonable development in new rural areas gives the local residents a sense of intrusion. Through sentiment analysis of rural landscape discussions, this study will assist decision-makers in understanding the emotional orientation and focus of the public, and aid scholars in providing new theoretical references. This is of great significance for the integrity of policies and the exploration of rural landscape development models.