Public perception of cultural ecosystem services in historic districts based on biterm topic model

Ying Pan; Nik Hazwani Nik Hashim; Hong Ching Goh

doi:10.1038/s41598-024-62770-0

Public perception of cultural ecosystem services in historic districts based on biterm topic model

Sci Rep. 2024 May 22;14(1):11717. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-62770-0.

Authors

Ying Pan¹, Nik Hazwani Nik Hashim², Hong Ching Goh¹

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Sustainable Urban Planning and Real Estate (SUPRE), Faculty of Built Environment, Universiti Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
² Centre for Sustainable Urban Planning and Real Estate (SUPRE), Faculty of Built Environment, Universiti Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. nikhazwani@um.edu.my.

Abstract

Historic districts are integral components of urban space, possessing diverse ecosystems that can offer various cultural services to the public. Urbanization and tourism development have led to the degradation of the ecological landscapes within historic districts, impacting sustainable development. Incorporating Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) into the environmental research of historic districts can meet people's spiritual needs, enhance intangible benefits for humanity, and promote the conservation of the ecological environment within historic districts. Therefore, this study conducted perceptual quantification research on CES in four typical historic districts in Fuzhou City, crawling the online comment data through Python, mined its potential themes using Biterm Topic Model (BTM), and extracted and categorized the indicators of CES of historic districts by combining with expert consultation; meanwhile, the satisfaction of CES of historic districts is further explored with the help of two methods, namely, sentiment analysis and Importance-Performance analysis (IPA), and summarized the public perception of CES of historic districts. The results of the study show that: (1) the dimensions of public perception of CES in urban historic districts include Cultural Heritage, Leisure Tourism, Aesthetic Enjoyment, Spiritual Fulfillment, Inspiration, and Science Education six indicators, of which Leisure Tourism is most easily perceived by the public, but its satisfaction is not high; (2) the public's perception of positive emotions towards the CES of historic districts in Fuzhou is greater than negative emotions, with positive emotions accounting for 80.61%; (3) the public's overall satisfaction with the CES of Fuzhou's historic districts is high, and according to the final analysis results of the IPA, the four historic districts of Fuzhou are respectively proposed to improve the opinions. Based on big data, this study explores the public perception characteristics of CES in Fuzhou historic districts to promote its sustainable development and improve public well-being, which is of great significance to protecting the ecological environment of historic districts and improving the quality of cultural services.

Keywords: Biterm topic model; Cultural ecosystem services (CES); Historic districts; Importance analysis; Importance-performance analysis; Public perception; Satisfaction analysis; Sentiment analysis.