The relationship between public attention and COVID-19: evidence from the big data analysis of Google trends

We investigate the impacts of the public attention towards the COVID-19 on the situation of the epidemic worldwide and on public mobility with Google trends. We use the number of searches for two keywords 'corona virus' and 'mask' on the Google search index to show people's...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied economics letters 2022-10, Vol.29 (17), p.1586-1593
Main Authors: Lo, Kai Lisa, Liu, Huizhu, Yang, Minhua, Mi, Jackson Jinhong
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attention
Big Data
COVID-19
Cure
Economic analysis
Economic theory
Economics
Mobility
people's attention
public mobility
Search engines
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We investigate the impacts of the public attention towards the COVID-19 on the situation of the epidemic worldwide and on public mobility with Google trends. We use the number of searches for two keywords 'corona virus' and 'mask' on the Google search index to show people's public attention towards the epidemic. The findings show that confirmed cases and death rates are significantly positively (negatively) associated with the public attention paid to epidemic in the early (later) stage of the epidemic. The reason may be that in the early stage of the epidemic, public attention increased outpatient rates and therefore confirmed cases significantly, while in the later stage, public attention accordingly increased cure rates significantly. The epidemic significantly eases for people's mobility trends when refraining from going outdoors. Such impacts are more profound for low-income countries.
ISSN:1350-4851
1466-4291
DOI:10.1080/13504851.2021.1948958