Research on the Spatial and Temporal Differences in Public Response to Release-Type Communication to Stop Food Waste

Abstract

Release-type communication is a common way to guide the public to reduce food waste. It is of great significance to clarify the intervention effect of release-type communication on residents’ waste behavior and reveal the time evolution law of public response to reduce food waste. This study obtains 13,958 comments on food waste through big data mining and explores characteristics of public response to food waste behavior in different time and space from two dimensions of support intention and implementation intention. Through statistical analysis, empirical mode decomposition method, and cross-analysis, we find that: Public concern about release-type communication to stop food waste has experienced five stages: Incubation period, outbreak period, recession period, second outbreak period, and fading period. Overall, the support intention presents a down-up-down trend, the implementation intention rises and then descends, both appear inflection point in recession period. The trend term of empirical mode decomposition shows that the support intention goes down, the implementation intention goes up. Besides, the support intention and implementation intention of release-type communication to stop food waste are generally higher in western China. In particular, the support intention is significantly reduced in Beijing, Guangdong, and Fujian. The implementation intention is significantly increased in Shanghai, while it’s reduced notably in Shandong. This study provides important implications for guiding the public to reduce food waste, the government should formulate differentiated governance strategies to guide the public to reduce food waste according to the time change characteristics and spatial territorial differences of the public on release-type communication.