Public Perception and Optimization of Macau Light Rapid Transit’s Cultural Space from the Perspective of Social Media Data

Abstract As rail transit systems increasingly assume the function of disseminating urban culture, light rail cultural space has gradually become an important interface for citizens to perceive local characteristics and establish urban identity. As a tourist city where Chinese and Portuguese cultures converge, Macau’s rail transit construction not only undertakes functional commuting tasks but also shoulders the dual mission of cultural display and city image shaping. This article takes the Macau Light Rapid Transit (LRT) as the research object, relying on Python crawler technology to capture the public’s comments and short video content related to “Macau Light Rapid Transit culture space” on the three major social platforms of TikTok (Douyin), RedNote (Xiaohongshu), and Sina Weibo, and uses SnowNLP sentiment analysis and LDA topic modeling methods to explore the current status of its cultural space expression, public perception level, and design optimization path based on multi-source data. The study found that (1) the light rail cultural space provides an intuitive entry for the public to construct a city impression, and the public’s overall evaluation is positive: Among the 21,378 comment samples, positive emotions accounted for 57.4 %, negative emotions accounted for 40.3 %, and neutral emotions accounted for 2.3 %; (2) based on the video content and the popularity of comments, the public’s cultural perception is ranked from strong to weak in the following order: train space (50 %), platform and concourse space (33 %), and entrance and exit space (17 %); (3) the current cultural space of the Macau Light Rapid Transit still has problems such as low cultural recognition, a single interactive form, and fragmented functional areas. The research suggests that the cultural space should be transformed from symbolic decoration to experiential space, focusing on the design of themed trains, strengthening the narrative structure of the concourse, and building landmark entrances and exits to enhance the communication power and emotional cohesion of the Macau Light Rapid Transit culture.