Role of YouTube in creating awareness of sustainable transportation: A Latent Dirichlet Allocation approach

Sustainability is an important issue of the modern era, particularly in the rapidly growing transportation sector, which is essential for economic growth but, at the same time, is a potential peril for achieving global sustainability. The world is gradually moving towards sustainable transportation modes. However, it is imperative to create awareness of this in people and disseminate the pertinent information required to assist them in knowing and adopting sustainable alternatives available in transportation. Social media plays a crucial role in global communication these days. This study investigates the role of the social media platform YouTube in disseminating knowledge and creating awareness about sustainable transportation. Utilizing data from 2007 to 2024, the study employed Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling, and sentiment analysis to YouTube comments on sustainable transportation and public transit systems was conducted. The research reveals a significant increase in content production, particularly during 2019–2022, coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic. The LDA topic modeling results identified five key topics in sustainable transportation discussions and two in public transit systems. Sentiment analysis of 228,823 comments about sustainable transportation showed 41.0 % positive sentiment, with 19.2 % negative and 39.7 % neutral responses. Similarly, examining 373,203 comments regarding public transit systems demonstrated comparable results, with 40.0 % positive, 17.1 % negative, and 42.9 % neutral sentiments. These findings suggest an overall favorable public attitude toward sustainable mobility solutions. The study highlights YouTube's potential as an educational platform and public engagement tool in sustainable transportation, offering insights for policymakers, urban planners, and transportation engineers in developing sustainable and publicly acceptable transportation solutions.