A Big-Data Analysis of Public Perceptions of Service Robots Amid Covid-19

Abstract

This research note investigates public perceptions of robotic services in the hospitality and tourism industry in the context of COVID-19. Relevant comments from YouTube videos were crawled and analysed by Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques including explorative analysis, sentiment analysis, and topic modelling. The results reveal that while there are supporters and opponents toward robotic services during the pandemic, the overall public sentiment is neutral, and confirm that the health factor and a series of social-cultural factors encompassing the employment concern, political influence, and cultural norm should be involved as more significant variables for COVID-Tourism research. Some practical suggestions for robotic services amidst COVID-19 are accordingly put forward.

Keywords

• COVID-19
• service robot
• public perception
• hospitality and tourism industry

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