Journal of Cleaner Production 387 (2023) 135840

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Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Public perceptions of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) based

on social media data: Evidence from China
Muyang Liu, Xiaowei Luo, Wei-Zhen Lu *
Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Handling Editor: Tomas B. Ramos Environmental and social challenges are intensifying globally. Then along comes more demands to deliver
successful environmental, social, and governance (ESG) outcomes. Understanding public perceptions of ESG is
Keywords: paramount to gaining public support, advancing ESG actions, and creating a sustainable ESG policy system. This
ESG study aims to explore the general public’s perceptions of ESG. The setting is China, where ESG is in its infancy
Public perceptions
and ESG policies are incomplete. Given the richness of social media data, a social media analytics (SMA)
Social media analytics
framework is applied to obtain public perceptions from Sina Weibo, the largest Chinese social media platform.
Topic modeling
Sentiment analysis The SMA framework integrates descriptive analysis, topic modeling, and sentiment analysis to investigate the
characteristics of users concerned about ESG, discover latent ESG-based topics from posts and examine corre­
sponding attention, as well as identify public sentiment orientation and opinions on ESG from their comments.
The results indicate that there are regional and industry-specific disparities in ESG-conscious users. The latent
topics often discussed in posts include ESG investment, ESG disclosure, ESG rating, and ESG notion and practice.
It is observed that the increasing number of Weibo posts has not received the corresponding growing attention.
The comments containing positive, neutral, and negative sentiments account for 66.03%, 17.37%, and 16.60%,
respectively. The negative sentiments might result from the greenwashing effect, inadequate knowledge of ESG,
inconsistency among ESG ratings, and lack of transparency in rating methods. The findings can aid policymakers
and corporations in proactively comprehending public needs and providing guidance for effective ESG
communication on social media and policy improvement.

1. Introduction
The evolving social, environmental, and economic challenges of so­
ciety have fueled more complex issues such as climate change, envi­
ronmental pollution, unemployment, and poverty (Dartey-Baah and
Amoako, 2021). As the idea that organizations have responsibilities for
the well-being of society in the business world came, an increasing
number of corporations have shifted their focus towards environmental,
social, and governance (ESG) issues (Xie et al., 2019). The ESG concept
is to maximize the integrated value of economy, environment, and so­
ciety; it refers to a set of non-financial performance metrics, including
environmental (E), social (S), and governance (G). The environmental
criteria cover the impacts of corporate operations on the environment,
such as greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency and consumption,
and waste and resource management. The social factors involve a firm’s
social relationships, especially with its employees, e.g., gender policies,
labor standards, and employee health and safety. The governance
indicators measure how a company governs itself and balances or aligns
the interests of various stakeholders. ESG is regarded as one of the
driving forces to realize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
proposed by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in 2015 (UN,
2015).
As the world’s largest economy, China has likewise placed a pre­
mium on ESG advancement in recent years. Chinese government and
agencies have issued relevant policies and guidelines, e.g., both the
Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) and Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE)
released guidance documents on ESG disclosure (SSE, 2020; SZSE,
2020). Regarding ESG investment, it was reported that the size of
pan-ESG mutual funds was over RMB 120 billion in 2020; for ESG
disclosure, more than 1000 listed companies have issued ESG reports by
July 2020, which was almost twice the number in 2011 (China SIF,
2020). However, ESG development in China is still in its infancy. Less
stringent ESG standards alone cannot create a coercive force to improve
market participation in ESG-based events. The listed companies having

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: bcwzlu@cityu.edu.hk (W.-Z. Lu).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.135840
Received 11 February 2022; Received in revised form 16 December 2022; Accepted 31 December 2022
Available online 5 January 2023
0959-6526/© 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
M. Liu et al.
released ESG reports accounted for less than 30% by the first half of
2020 (Syntaogf, 2020). Liu and Anbumozhi (2009) found that Chinese
listed companies selectively disclose their environmental information;
also, the quality of ESG reporting is often questioned, and the market
cannot perceive whether ESG disclosures are credible (Lu and Abeyse­
kera, 2021).
Moving forward with ESG requires not only well-developed policy
systems but also public acceptance and support (OECD, 2020). Under­
standing the public’s perceptions of ESG is critical for gaining their
support. At the individual level, the Technology Acceptance Model
(TAM) introduced by Davis (1986) explains how public perceptions of
ESG might influence their engagement in ESG-related events, such as
purchasing green and low-carbon products and participating in ESG
investment. From the corporate perspective, legitimacy theory and
stakeholder theory indicate that companies’ ESG actions should be in
accord with social expectations. Several studies have already demon­
strated the influence of public perceptions on corporate sustainability
practices (e.g., Rhou et al., 2016; Vuong and Suzuki, 2021). Chen and
Wan (2020) discovered that social trust is crucial for enhancing corpo­
rate social responsibility, while trust comes into play through social
expectations and public opinion pressure.
The previous work and related theories imply the importance of
understanding public perceptions in ESG development, yet few studies
have strived to examine such understanding. Some scholars have
explored public perceptions but are limited to specific stakeholder
groups such as employees and customers (e.g., Ramasamy and Yeung,
2009; Tian et al., 2011; Al-Zoubi and Al-Tkhayneh, 2019). In addition,
although some research has investigated the general public’s percep­
tions of ESG (e.g., China SSE, 2020; SECNewgate, 2021), they still rely
on traditional data collection approaches like questionnaire surveys. It is
challenging to grasp prompt public opinions towards ESG and observe
the constant change in attention.
Social media has become an integral part of everyone’s life in the
contemporary era. The popularization of social media provides a new
chance to capture big data reflecting users’ thoughts and opinions (Chen
and Zhang, 2022). Hence, this study aims to systemically investigate
public perceptions of ESG using social media data. The setting is China,
where ESG is still in its infancy and the ESG policy system cannot
constitute an effective constraint force for voluntary ESG engagement
(Chen and Wan, 2020; Singhania and Saini, 2021). A social media an­
alytics (SMA) research framework is employed to accomplish the goal.
Specifically, social media data are accumulated through a web crawler
from Sina Weibo, China’s largest social media platform. Following data
preprocessing and cleansing, descriptive analysis is conducted to char­
acterize the users concerned about ESG. Topic modeling is then devel­
oped to extract latent ESG-based topics from Weibo posts to understand
public concerns. Public attention to different posts is also determined by
calculating the number of likes, forwards, and comments. Sentiment
analysis is performed to explore public sentiment orientation and
opinions on ESG.
This study presents the following significances. First, limited efforts
were made to understand public perceptions of ESG, although its
importance has been highlighted in prior studies. Hence, this study ex­
pands the knowledge and develops a foundation for future research.
Second, this study explores Chinese public perceptions of ESG by
analyzing social media data, allowing for a more thorough and dynamic
understanding. Third, the findings are critical for policymakers and
companies to take proactive measures for ESG advancements and
communication.
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 pre­
sents a review of relevant literature. Section 3 introduces the method­
ology used herein. Section 4 presents the results, and Section 5 discusses
the interesting findings. Finally, Section 6 brings this paper to a close.
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Journal of Cleaner Production 387 (2023) 135840
2. Literature review
2.1. ESG and related terms
ESG is an acronym for environmental, social, and governance. The
ESG concept is not entirely new in the business world; it is closely
connected with socially responsible investing (SRI) and corporate social
responsibility (CSR) or sustainability (Buniamin, 2020). However, there
are still some differences among ESG, SRI, CSR, and sustainability terms.
Sustainability is a broad term that can mean different things to
different subjects. Sustainability generally focuses on environmental
concerns and seeks a balanced relationship between organization
development and natural resource consumption, but it can also refer to
human resource protection and other aspects (Çalıyurt, 2020). Given the
umbrella concept of sustainability, ESG, CSR, and SRI can all be incor­
porated into this domain. For example, the Sustainability Accounting
Standards Board (SASB) has published standards to guide the disclosure
of financially material sustainability information, which integrates ESG
issues (SASB, 2022).
CSR and SRI are two topics closely intertwined with ESG. CSR is
defined as a concept whereby companies voluntarily integrate envi­
ronmental and social considerations into their business operations and
interactions with stakeholders (Strand et al., 2014). SRI seeks to inte­
grate specific ethical criteria into the financial-driven investment pro­
cesses (Sandberg et al., 2008). Fig. 1 presents the comparison of ESG
with CSR and SRI.
2.2. Public perceptions of ESG
Recent years have witnessed an exponential increase in organiza­
tions worldwide incorporating ESG-related considerations into their
business operations (Amel-Zadeh and Serafeim, 2018). According to
neo-institutional theory, organizational behavior is not merely shaped
by benefits and efficiency but also by an environment with institutional
elements (Chen and Wan, 2020). Thus, it is argued that a company’s
ESG-related behavior is driven by different institutions. Most previous
research explored the influence of formal institutions on ESG fulfillment,
such as political, legal, and economic systems (Jean et al., 2016; Ado­
mako and Nguyen, 2020; Khan et al., 2020; Singhania and Saini, 2021).
However, it was suggested that policies and regulations could not serve
as a standalone factor to improve a country’s overall ESG performance
(Singhania and Saini, 2021). Moreover, compared to developed coun­
tries, there is still insufficient law enforcement and regulatory compli­
ance in developing countries like China; it fails to constitute an effective
constraint force for corporations to voluntarily engage in ESG activities
(Chen and Wan, 2020).
According to legitimacy theory, companies may only survive if they
operate in accordance with society’s expectations and values. Mean­
while, stakeholder theory emphasizes that creating values for stake­
holders is essential to ensure the success and sustainability of
corporations (Freeman, 1984). The stakeholders include not only
shareholders but also employees, suppliers, customers, communities,
and more broadly, all of society. ESG engagement may therefore be
shaped by informal institutions such as social norms, values, culture,
and cognitive systems, in addition to formal institutional constraints
(Costa and Menichini, 2013). Among these, public perceptions serve as a
dominant symbol of informal institutions to affect ESG adoptions. Public
perceptions can be viewed from three aspects: knowledge, awareness,
and sentiment. In the context of ESG development, the knowledge aspect
reflects the public comprehension of basic ideas and principles con­
cerning ESG. Public awareness focuses on attention and concerns
regarding ESG-related issues, whereas sentiment reflects the public’s
feelings and attitudes towards ESG.
Several scholars have realized the importance of public perceptions
and discussed their influence on corporate ESG-related behavior. Due to
the consistency between ESG and CSR, the research on CSR is also
M. Liu et al.
Fig. 1. The comparison of ESG with CSR and SRI: connection and difference (Dathe et al., 2022; Gillan et al., 2021; Gupta, 2021; Syed and Ntim, 2017).
considered to expand the reference scope. Chen and Wan (2020)
analyzed the relationship between social trust and CSR, and their find­
ings highlighted the role of social trust in CSR improvement. Social trust
is viewed as an important social norm that manifests itself through social
expectations and public opinion pressure. Serafeim (2020) found that
public sentiment momentum around ESG issues influences investor
views about the value of sustainability activities. Rhou et al. (2016)
argued that low CSR awareness might not realize the full value of firms’
strategic CSR efforts. Vuong and Suzuki (2021) investigated the role of
investors’ sentiments in corporate ESG performance, and the results
suggested that negative sentiments can stimulate a company’s future
commitment to ESG.
In addition to the effect on organizational behavior, the role of public
perceptions in ESG development might also be understood on an indi­
vidual level through the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Com­
bined with the basic idea of TAM introduced by Davis (1986), perceived
usefulness and perceived ease of use form a person’s belief in ESG, which
predicts their attitudes towards ESG and influences their acceptance.
Individual acceptance of ESG can be reflected by proactive behaviors
such as purchasing green and low-carbon products, adopting ESG
investing, and engaging in ESG-related work.
Extant literature and theories indicate that it is essential to
comprehend public perceptions in ESG development. However, few
studies have strived to examine such understanding. Several studies
have investigated public perceptions of CSR but are limited to specific
stakeholder groups. It remains unclear what the general public’s per­
ceptions of ESG are. For example, Ramasamy and Yeung (2009) con­
ducted a self-administered survey to investigate consumers’ perceptions
of CSR; the results indicated that consumers in Shanghai were more
supportive of CSR than in Hong Kong. Tian et al. (2011) argued that the
extent of consumers’ CSR awareness might be low because CSR in China
remains at the exploratory stage. Al-Zoubi and Al-Tkhayneh (2019)
investigated employees’ perceptions of CSR in public and private in­
stitutions and found that employees working in public institutions have
a higher perception. Moreover, with the increasing public exposure to
ESG, their cognition and views on ESG-related items might change
continuously. Relying on traditional data collection approaches, such as
questionnaire surveys and interview methods, makes it challenging to
grasp prompt public opinions towards ESG and observe a constant
change in attention. Hence, to address the limitations, several ap­
proaches based on big data are adopted to gain a comprehensive un­
derstanding of public perceptions of ESG.
2.3. Social media and ESG development
The ESG notion is developed based on legitimacy theory and
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Journal of Cleaner Production 387 (2023) 135840
stakeholder theory. To comprehend and satisfy public demands and
expectations, firms need to communicate their ESG activities with
stakeholders besides acting socially responsible (Cho et al., 2017).
Morsing and Schultz (2006) suggested that communication between
firms and the public should evolve from a merely informative one-way
to a two-way direction, highlighting listening to the public voice.
Thus, it is necessary to select appropriate ESG communication tools.
In the Web 2.0 era, social media have provided new communication
channels for corporations to inform, understand and connect with their
stakeholders. Social media platforms (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,
and Sina Weibo) play an influential role in both disseminating ESG in­
formation and reflecting public attention and attitudes (Cho et al.,
2017). Given the power of social media to spark public interest,
numerous CEOs have a public Facebook page, and an increasing number
of corporations have adopted those platforms in their ESG communi­
cation (Wang and Huang, 2018).
The popularity of social media usage in the business community has
also aroused increasing interest from academic circles. Investigating
ESG-related social media data and its influence is rapidly gaining
prominence. For example, Burke (2021) viewed social media as an
influential third party that reflects public opinion towards ESG issues,
and he found that negative media coverage of ESG might result in CEO
dismissal. Russo et al. (2021) investigated the influence of social media
on corporate sustainability performance, and the results demonstrated a
positive relationship between social media profiles and ESG scores. Lee
et al. (2022) examined what and how automotive brands signal ESG
information for brand valuation.
Social media data can be a valuable asset for capturing the general
public’s perceptions of ESG. Unlike the previous studies limited to
messages published by specific companies or associated with a partic­
ular social event, this study conducts a comprehensive analysis of pub­
licly ESG-related social media data.
2.4. Social media analytics (SMA)
The expanding use of social media generates a large amount of data
and creates new opportunities for better understanding societal phe­
nomena. Hence, social media analytics (SMA) has been an emerging
field of research and aroused great interest from researchers. According
to Zachlod et al. (2022), SMA is an interdisciplinary area that aims to
develop, extend, and adapt informatic methods for tracking, collecting,
and analyzing social media data to extract valuable patterns and
knowledge. Given the importance and value of social media, SMA has
been widely used in different domains, especially business, crisis
communication, and political communication (Stieglitz et al., 2018).
Despite the variety of research fields involved, the tools and processes
M. Liu et al.
for gaining valuable information from social media are often similar.
Therefore, this section presents an overview of common methods and
research frameworks for SMA and provides the basis for the theoretical
paradigm and analytical approaches used in this study.
2.4.1. Methods for social media analytics
The typical types of social media data include structured and un­
structured data. Structured data comprise user demographic informa­
tion, spatial and temporal data, as well as attention-related data (e.g.,
the numbers of likes, forwards, and comments). Unstructured data refer
to textual content generated by users, such as posts and comments
(Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan, 2012). According to different kinds of data,
the common methods adopted for SMA involve topic modeling, senti­
ment analysis, and social network analysis.
Topic modeling aims at extracting hidden structures from a collec­
tion of documents through the co-occurrence frequencies of words
(Barde and Bainwad, 2017). A topic is a group of words that are likely to
occur in the same context. The application of topic modeling in SMA
involves scanning and monitoring dominant topics, discovering user
interests, and detecting emerging themes. For example, Jeong et al.
(2019) applied topic modeling to social media data associated with the
target product to identify latent product topics often discussed by cus­
tomers. Zhong and Schweidel (2020) proposed an extended latent
Dirichlet allocation (LDA) model, a topic modeling approach, to capture
latent shifts in the social media content from brand crises and a new
product launch.
Sentiment analysis, also known as opinion mining, is another text
mining technique often used for SMA. Sentiment analysis is the appli­
cation of computational linguistics, natural language processing, and
other text mining methods to extract users’ sentiments and opinions
from textual data (Lee, 2018). Such subjective information identified
supports crisis management, stock market movement prediction, market
trends, and product defect detection (Fan and Gordon, 2014).
Social network analysis is the process of analyzing the underlying
structures of a social network (Scott, 2000). A social network comprises
nodes (users) and edges (relations linking different users). Social
network analysis presents visual and mathematical patterns of user re­
lationships in a network by modeling social network dynamics and
growth using network density, centrality, and flows (Lee, 2018). Social
network analysis is often applied to identify key influencers and detect
online communities based on various metrics (Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan,
2012).
As this study relies more on the information content to understand
public perceptions of ESG, two content analysis methods (i.e., topic
modeling and sentiment analysis) are adopted to analyze unstructured
social media data. Mapping user relationships is not the focus of this
study; thus, social network analysis is not considered.
2.4.2. Research frameworks for social media analytics
The steps used to gain insights from social media data share many
similarities. Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan (2012) proposed a two-stage
methodological framework for SMA in political communication,
including data tracking and monitoring, and data analysis. The first step
deals with how and what kinds of social media data can be tracked and
monitored, while the second is concerned with various methods for
different analysis purposes. Similarly, the processes of SMA for enter­
prises suggested by Lee (2018) also involve choosing, monitoring, and
listening to social media data (data tracking and monitoring), as well as
performing social media analytics (data analysis). However, deter­
mining key metrics and building social media intelligence is considered
in the first and last stage, respectively. The key social media metrics are
developed according to the objectives of SMA, while social media in­
telligence provides insights from the analysis results.
Some researchers also explore a general framework independent of
domains and research methodology to offer guidance on how to carry
out social media research. For example, Fan and Gordon (2014)
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Journal of Cleaner Production 387 (2023) 135840
developed a CUP framework for SMA consisting of “capture”, “under­
stand”, and “present”. Stieglitz et al. (2018) added a “discovery” phrase
as a preliminary step before tracking social media data to uncover latent
structures of a topic in a general context where the topics tracked might
not be known beforehand.
Referring to the aforementioned social media analytic processes, this
study adopts the following five-stage SMA framework:
● Stage 1: Understanding the application domain and defining the SMA
goals. It is an initial preparatory stage that guides the subsequent
actions of SMA, including the choice of social media data sources and
corresponding analysis methods.
● Stage 2: Selecting and tracking social media data. Having defined the
SMA goals, this stage involves the decisions on social media plat­
forms (e.g., Twitter, Facebook), data types, and tracking methods.
The choice of social media platforms often depends on platform
impact and data accessibility (Lee, 2018). The data monitored and
tracked serve as the basis for subsequent analysis.
● Stage 3: Preprocessing and cleansing data. This stage is performed to
improve data quality and ensure data reliability by removing data
noises.
● Stage 4: Selecting and employing analysis methods. According to the
SMA goals, the analysis methods (topic modeling, sentiment anal­
ysis, and social network analysis) are determined and performed to
extract valid patterns from the cleaned data (Stieglitz et al., 2018).
● Stage 5 Interpreting results and presenting findings. In the last stage, the
analysis results are summarized and interpreted, and the findings are
presented in an intuitive and easy-to-understand picture (Fan and
Gordon, 2014).
3. Methodology
Based on the general five-stage framework for SMA, this section
provides detailed information on social media data and analysis
methods applied in this study. A preparatory step before selecting data
and methods was to define the goal of SMA: to gain an understanding of
the general Chinese public’s perceptions of ESG. Then the objective
guided the choice of social media data and analysis methods. An over­
view of the analytics process is illustrated in Fig. 2 and detailed below.
3.1. Data selecting and tracking
Having defined the SMA goal, the social media data used for subse­
quent analysis should be determined. The first step is to choose the data
source, i.e., social media platforms. Given the popularity of the platform
and data accessibility, Sina Weibo was chosen as the data source for this
study. According to the Data center of Weibo (2020), there were more
than 511 million Weibo monthly active users in September 2020, which
accounted for almost 36% of China’s total population. In addition,
Weibo is the only platform with public information, making it valuable
for tracking and analyzing the public perceptions of ESG.
The data collected from Sina Weibo consist of two types: structured
and unstructured data (Fig. 3). Structured data comprise user profiles,
temporal data (i.e., time of posting), and attention-related data (e.g.,
number of likes, forwards, comments). There are two types of Weibo
users: individual and institutional users. Individual user information
collection centers on usernames and regions, while institutional user
profiles involve usernames and industries. Unstructured data refer to
user-generated content, such as posts and comments.
After determining the social media platform and corresponding data
types, the method used for data collection needs to be further consid­
ered. The web crawler, an automatic web information retrieval tool, has
emerged to extract social media data (Sharma and Gupta, 2015). There
are various web crawler techniques, including parallel crawler, focused
crawler, incremental web crawler, and hidden web crawler. The focused
crawler collects web pages satisfying a specific topic (Gupta and Anand,
M. Liu et al.
Fig. 2. An overview of the five-stage SMA framework used in the study.
Fig. 3. Different types of social media data collected from Sina Weibo: structured and unstructured data.
2015). It knows the crawler boundaries by finding the most relevant
information while filtering out the irrelevant regions (Kumar et al.,
2018). The general workflow of the focused crawler is depicted in Fig. 4.
This study conducted the focused crawler to gather ESG-based Weibo
data by means of GooSeeker, a mature software of web crawler tech­
niques. GooSeeker can grab the required data from web pages based on
users’ guidance and output data-collection results in a certain structure.
First, the username and password were input to complete the simulation
login on the Sina Weibo platform. Then, the initial link (https://s.weibo.
com/) used for gathering information was acquired. The term ‘ESG’ was
selected as a search topic to obtain targeted web pages and crawler
content. Subsequently, the ESG-based Weibo data were collected and
stored.
3.2. Data preprocessing and cleansing
To prepare high-quality social media data for further analysis, a
preprocessing and cleansing step needs to be carried out. For example,
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Journal of Cleaner Production 387 (2023) 135840
dirty data should be eliminated to make sure the data set is free of
irrelevant and incorrect information. Regarding user profiles, dirty data
refer to unauthenticated user information. Unauthenticated users of Sina
Weibo have not conducted identity authentication through the real-
name system, which cannot guarantee the authenticity of their infor­
mation. Thus, only authenticated user information was considered to
ensure the reliability of data analysis. Meaningless and irrelevant in­
formation contained in user-generated content was also filtered out
through manual review, including web links, advertisements, forward­
ing language, and off-topic data.
In addition, tokenization needs to be performed in this stage to
process unstructured textual data in Chinese. Unlike English, there are
no spaces between Chinese words. Hence, tokenization helps parse a
large amount of text data quickly by chopping a piece of text into smaller
units called tokens. Jieba, an open source for Chinese word segmenta­
tion in the python language, was utilized to realize the tokenization of
Weibo posts and comments. Based on the Trie Tree structure, Jieba
generates all possible words from the analyzed sentences; then, it uses
M. Liu et al.
Fig. 4. The general workflow of the focused web crawler.
dynamic programming to obtain the largest segmentation result ac­
cording to word frequency (Day and Lee, 2016). Moreover, Jieba allows
customizing the dictionary and stop-word list to ensure higher accuracy.
3.3. Descriptive analysis
A descriptive analysis was conducted to summarize the social media
data collected straightforwardly. The Weibo user profiles were analyzed
to determine the characteristics of ESG-conscious people. Calculating
the number of ESG-related posts and their comments, likes, and for­
wards reflected the degree of public interest and engagement in ESG.
Combined with temporal data, it can be observed how such attention
level has changed over time.
3.4. Topic modeling
3.4.1. Architecture of LDA
Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), one of the most popular algo­
rithms for topic modeling, was used to discover the latent semantic
structures and patterns of ESG-related Weibo posts. LDA treats docu­
ments as a probabilistic distribution over latent topics, where each topic
is associated with a set of words (Jelodar et al., 2018). It assumes that
documents with similar topics will share a group of similar words. Ac­
cording to the topics extracted by LDA, the essence of each document
can be summarized and represented by the topic composition with the
greatest weight.
LDA is a generative probabilistic model that can be represented as a
graphic model (Fig. 5). The generative process is modeled as follows:
(1) For each document i, select a topic distribution θi (θ ∼ Dir(α)).
(2) For each word j in the document i (wi,j ), select a topic zi,j from θi .
(3) Choose a distribution φzi,j (φ ∼ Dir(β)) for the topic zi,j .
(4) Choose a word wi,j from φzi,j .
3.4.2. The process of modeling topics using LDA
Utilizing the LDA method, dominant ESG-based topics from relevant
Weibo posts were identified. A corpus of ESG-related Weibo posts was
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Journal of Cleaner Production 387 (2023) 135840
Fig. 5. The graphical representation of LDA. The outer box represents docu­
ments, while the inner one means the repeated choice of topics and words
within a document. More detailed information can be obtained from Blei
et al. (2003).
created after the operation of data preprocessing and cleansing. The
topic modeling process in this study included the following steps:
(1) Vector representation. The individual word token needs to be
converted into a vector representation for computers to under­
stand and further process.
(2) Developing the LDA model. Genism is an increasingly popular topic
modeling package known for its convenience and extendibility;
all it needs is a well-prepared corpus of documents. Given the
ease of using the Python programing language, the LDA model
was developed based on the Python Genism library.
(3) LDA model visualization. The problem with LDA is the difficulty in
determining the topic number, and unfortunately, there is no best
way to choose the optimal clustering number. Moreover, the
topics inferred by LDA are sometimes hard to explain (Wang
et al., 2019). An interactive visualization system, namely LDAvis,
was therefore utilized to determine the fitted topic number, and
visualize and interpret the topics. Much information can be ob­
tained from LDAvis, involving the prevalence of each topic and
their correlations (Sievert and Shirley, 2014). In the LDAvis vi­
sual interface, each topic is represented as a circle. The circle size
means the popularity of the topic. The distance between two
circles stands for the similarity of topics. If the circles are close to
each other or even overlap, there is a high similarity between
topics, indicating that the topic number might be inappropriate.
Based on previous research experience, the number of topics
should be adjusted until there is enough space between different
clusters (Zhao et al., 2019).
The LDAvis interface also shows the top words ranked by relevance to
each topic. As defined by Sievert and Shirley (2014), a word’s relevance
combines probability and lift through a weight parameter λ, i.e., rele­
vance = λ * probability + (1-λ) * lift (where 0 ≤ λ ≤ 1). Probability rep­
resents a word’s frequency within a specific topic and is often estimated
in LDA using Variational Bayes methods or Collapsed Gibbs Sampling.
Lift is the ratio of a word’s probability to its marginal probability across the
corpus, which can decrease the rankings of globally frequent words.
Setting λ = 1 ranks words solely by probability, while setting λ = 0 ranks
them completely by lift. The optimal value of λ may vary according to
the corpus used (Sievert and Shirley, 2014). The λ setting should be
M. Liu et al.
adjusted to make the top words displayed more coherent and
interpretable.
(4) Determining the dominant topics of each post. The LDA model was
further used to obtain the topic labels of Weibo posts. The output
of the LDA model was the topic probability distribution of each
document. The topic with the highest probability was selected as
the document’s dominant topic. According to the dominant topics
of each post, the representative posts were acquired to better
understand ESG-based topics. Moreover, the number of Weibo
posts, likes, forwards, and comments under each topic were
analyzed to understand the public attention level.
3.5. Sentiment analysis
Sentiment analysis was used to identify public attitudes and views on
ESG from the comments on Weibo posts. There are two types of senti­
ment analysis approaches: supervised and unsupervised. Supervised
sentiment analysis requires annotating the emotional tendencies of the
training set manually in advance. The success of such an approach de­
pends on the quantity and quality of the training data (Madhoushi et al.,
2015). However, while accumulating large amounts of unlabeled data is
much easier, it is time-consuming and expensive to obtain sentiment
labels, making the unsupervised approach essential for various research
(Hu et al., 2013). Unsupervised sentiment analysis integrates sentiment
dictionaries and rules to identify the sentiment orientation of text data;
it is also suitable for fine-grained short texts (Li et al., 2021). Given that
the comments on ESG-related posts were stored in a short textual format,
dictionary-based sentiment analysis was employed to investigate public
sentiments towards ESG. The detailed steps are explained below.
(1) Constructing a sentiment dictionary. The core of dictionary-based
sentiment analysis is to train the sentiment dictionary. National
Taiwan University Semantic Dictionary (NTUSD) and HowNet
Dictionary were combined to develop positive and negative dic­
tionaries. Both NTUSD and HowNet are commonly used Chinese
dictionaries for sentiment analysis.
(2) Sentiment value calculation and sentiment orientation judgment.
SnowNLP, a third-party library of Python for sentiment analysis,
is an approachable and easy-to-use tool to deal with Chinese
7
Journal of Cleaner Production 387 (2023) 135840
corpus. SnowNLP was applied to calculate sentiment values of
comments on ESG-related Weibo posts and analyze the public
sentiment orientation towards ESG. First, the original product
review corpus was replaced by the combination of NTUSD and
HowNet to train the SnowNLP model. Then, based on the trained
model, the sentiment value of each comment was obtained as a
positive probability ranging from 0 to 1. If the score is closer to 1,
the review is more positive. The rules established for sentiment
classification are as follows:
(3) Public opinion analysis. After the classification, TF-IDF (Term
Frequency-Inverse Documents Frequency) and WordCloud were
utilized to demonstrate the relevant words in different comments.
TF-IDF measures the importance of each word in documents (Zhu
et al., 2016). The mechanism of TF-IDF is that word importance is
positively related to the word occurrence in each document while
negatively correlating with the frequency in the corpus (Caldas
and Soibelman, 2003). The opinions within different sentiments
were obtained according to the relevant words generated via
TF-IDF. The word clouds were then depicted to provide an intu­
itive and effective understanding of public opinions regarding
ESG.
4. Results
4.1. An overview of data collected from Sina Weibo
The collection of ESG-related Weibo data finished on September 10,
2021. Due to the access limitation of keyword search on Sina Weibo, the
web crawler software could only gather the first 50 result pages. A total
of 11,071 ESG-related Weibo posts with 6971 comments were collected.
After filtering out duplicate and meaningless data, 9313 posts and 4136
comments were provided for further analysis. Regarding user informa­
tion, there were 4362 user profiles collected from the Weibo platform.
Only authenticated user information was selected to guarantee the
reliability of data analysis. Finally, 3149 authenticated users were ob­
tained, including 2174 individual and 975 institutional users.
M. Liu et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 387 (2023) 135840

Fig. 6. Distribution of individual users with ESG-related posts by provinces.

Fig. 7. Distribution of individual users with ESG-related posts by major economic areas.

4.2. Characterization of users concerned about ESG
4.2.1. Individual users
Fig. 6 describes the regional distribution of individual users who
have released ESG-related posts. It is observed that Beijing had the most
Weibo users concerned about ESG, followed by Shanghai and Guang­
dong. Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong are the first echelon of prov­
inces with the most developed economy in China (Wang et al., 2019).
Based on regional development, China can be divided into four major
economic areas: Eastern China, Central China, Western China, and
Northeastern China. Eastern China had the highest economic level
among the four areas. As shown in Fig. 7, the individual user distribution
was Eastern > Central > Western > Northeastern. These results suggest
that people in relatively developed regions showed more interest in ESG.
4.2.2. Institutional users
Fig. 8 provides information about the industrial distribution of
institutional users. Overall, ESG has garnered considerable interest from
various sectors. Media agencies have progressively utilized social media
platforms for information dissemination and public engagement
(Al-Rawi, 2017). The pie chart on the right in Fig. 8 offers detailed
specialized fields of different media organizations. It is observed that

8
M. Liu et al.
Fig. 8. Industrial distribution of institutional users with ESG-related posts.
Fig. 9. The optimization process of the LDA topic number. Visualization results for setting the topic number to six, five, and four are presented from left to right.
financial media was the largest group of media organizations concerned
about ESG and the second one was comprehensive media, representing
around 19%. The financial industry expressed the second greatest
concern about ESG. More than 17% of institutional users releasing
ESG-related posts come from the financial sector. Moreover, the insti­
tutional users from the information technology, commercial service, as
well as public management and social organization industries accounted
for 14.77%, 11.18%, and 11.08%, respectively.
4.3. Dominant ESG-based topics and public attention
4.3.1. ESG-based topics extracted from the LDA model
LDAvis was employed to visualize the topic clustering results. Fig. 9
describes the topic number optimization process. Setting the topic
number to six or five caused some topics to overlap in the intertopic
distance map; when the figure went from five to four, the four clusters
were separated, and searching for the optimal topic number was
stopped. Finally, four latent topics often discussed in ESG-related Weibo
posts were determined.
Fig. 10 depicts the intertopic distance map of the four topics. To
ensure topic interpretability, the 15 most relevant terms were deter­
mined to define each topic with the appropriate value of λ (as shown in
Table 1). Based on the LDA model, the topic probability score of each
post was obtained, and the topic with the maximum probability was
selected as the dominant one of the related posts.
Combined with the related terms and representative posts with high
probability scores under each topic, the four dominant topics of ESG-
related Weibo posts were interpreted as ESG investment, ESG disclo­
sure, ESG rating, as well as ESG notion and practice.
ESG investment refers to using ESG criteria to screen potential in­
vestments. ESG investment is currently of intensive attention in both
investment and academic communities (Chen and Mussalli, 2020). In­
dividual investors constitute a large proportion of total investors in the
Chinese market. Thus, ESG-investment-related posts have emerged
rapidly on social media platforms, and often involve various ESG-based
9
Journal of Cleaner Production 387 (2023) 135840
investment products. ESG investment is expected to grow to several
trillion through Funds and ETFs in a few years (OECD, 2020). A series of
guidelines, rules, and policies have also been issued to promote ESG
investment in China (Zhang et al., 2021).
There is increasing demand from stakeholders for corporations to
report non-financial ESG information (i.e., ESG disclosure). Based on the
top related words, ESG-disclosure-related posts are related to the rele­
vant guidelines issued. For example, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing
Limited (HKEX) published the revised edition of the ESG Reporting
Guide on December 18, 2019 (HKEX, 2019). Since then, an abundance
of guide interpretation-related Weibo posts has been published.
ESG ratings are often provided by third-party rating agencies, such as
MSCI, Bloomberg, FTSE Russell, and Refinitiv. These rating agencies
predominantly measure how companies manage ESG-related risks and
their impacts on financial performance (Larcker et al., 2022). Regarding
ESG rating, the keywords ‘MSCI’, ‘level A’, ‘level BBB’, and ‘MSCI ESG
Leaders Indexes’ indicate that MSCI ESG Ratings significantly impact the
Chinese market. People are concerned about the ESG scores of A-share
companies in China, which might affect their investment decisions.
In addition, ESG notion and practice is another topic under discus­
sion on Sina Weibo. According to the keywords, the ESG essence is often
explained along with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and CSR. It
is also observed that there are many posts on integrating AI and other
technologies into ESG-related actions.
4.3.2. Public attention to ESG-based posts
Fig. 11 demonstrates the overall changes in the ESG-related Weibo
posts per month from February 2015 to early September 2021. The
number of ESG-based Weibo posts was relatively small before 2018, and
it was not until May 2018 that the post exceeded 300 for the first time.
The relevant event was that ‘MSCI announced to partially incorporate
China large-cap A-shares into the MSCI Emerging Markets Index’. Since
then, the Weibo post number on ESG has had noticeable fluctuation, but
an overall upward trend can be observed. It is indicated that there is
increasing ESG information released on the Chinese social media
M. Liu et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 387 (2023) 135840

Fig. 10. The intertopic distance map of the four LDA topics: ESG investment, ESG disclosure, ESG rating, and ESG notion and practice.

platform. Furthermore, the proportion of monthly Weibo posts under

Table 1
different dominant topics is depicted in Fig. 12. At the early stage of our
The top 15 relevant terms of each ESG-based topic.
observation, the Weibo posts were more focused on one single topic,
ESG investment ESG disclosure (λ ESG rating (λ = ESG notion and especially ESG disclosure and ESG investment. Over time, though, the
(λ = 0.4) = 0.2) 0.5) practice (λ = 0.9)
proportions of Weibo posts under the four topics have moved towards
investing disclosure MSCI ESG equilibrium.
ESG report rating global
The total number of likes, forwards, and comments on Weibo posts
fund environmental A-share Investing
carbon neutral governance incorporate SDG
was defined as the level of attention to ESG. Fig. 13 demonstrates the
index social ESG social monthly total and average attention to ESG-related Weibo posts. It is
green finance listed countries index environmental observed that the overall attention to ESG-based posts was not high, and
responsible guideline China China the public reacted differently to various ESG-related events. According
investment
to the average attention, most posts received less than 20 likes, forwards,
asset HKEX constituent stock risk
issue revise level A governance and comments.
market performance level BBB investor Three representative time periods were selected where Weibo posts
investment CSR plan CSR have attracted the greatest attention. First, it was in January 2017 that
strategy
the average attention reached the largest amount (over 60 per post),
science and investor MSCI ESG AI
technology Leaders Indexes
despite there being a small number of posts. The posts were related to the
product non-financial publish science and 2017 International Youth Leadership Finance Summit organized by the
technology SAIF Master of Finance Program. At the summit, many young talents
CSI CSRC weight value sparked discussions around the topic “the effect of ESG on capital
ETF quality Bloomberg platform
markets”. Second, in July 2019, the Weibo posts also attracted consid­
Note: SDG = Sustainable Development Goal; HKEX = Hong Kong Exchange and erable attention. The total number of likes, forwards, and comments was
Clearing Limited; CSR = Corporate Social Responsibility; CSI = China Securities more than 10,000, and the average attention was over 50 per post. The
Index; CSRC = China Securities Regulatory Commission; ETF = Exchange posts with high attention levels were associated with lab-grown di­
Traded Funds. amonds. According to the investigation of S&P Global, lab-grown

10
M. Liu et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 387 (2023) 135840

Fig. 11. Number of ESG-related Weibo posts per month.

Fig. 12. The proportion of Weibo posts under each ESG-based topic per month.

Fig. 13. The total and average attention level to ESG-related Weibo posts per month. The total attention level refers to the total number of likes, forwards, and
comments on Weibo posts. The average attention level is the ratio of the total attention level to the number of Weibo posts.

diamonds produced more greenhouse gases than natural ones, contrary attached great importance to the sustainability of products. According to
to their environmental protection claims (Trucost, 2019). Although the comments on related posts, it is found that the practice of green­
there is still a controversy over which diamonds are more eco-friendly, washing is much easier to attract public attention and may negatively
intensive attention to such the ESG incident reflects consumers have affect their attitudes towards brand image and corporate reputation.

11
M. Liu et al.
Additionally, ESG became a hot search term on Weibo in late August
2021, during the first ESG Global Leaders Summit organized by Sina
Finance. The discussion continued until early September, and the
average attention to the related posts was about 30 per post. The summit
topics attractive to people involved carbon emission, employee benefits,
education burden reduction, and the third distribution. The third dis­
tribution refers to creating opportunities for high-income organizations
to pay back to society through philanthropies (ChinaDaily, 2021). Based
on the issues discussed at the summit, it is observed that ESG is
permeating many fields of people’s life. It is also suggested that the
forum has provided great opportunities to popularize ESG knowledge
and made people exposed to ESG.
Regarding the attention to different ESG-based topics, the posts
focused on “ESG notion and practice” generated the most attention
(12.83 attention/post). The second one was “ESG disclosure” (10.52
attention/post), followed by “ESG investment” (8.25 attention/post)
and “ESG rating” (5.14 attention/post). Table 2 demonstrates the typical
posts under each topic that attracted great attention. It is observed that
the posts under ESG investment and ESG rating were more targeted to
investors, which might make the general public less interested.
4.4. Public sentiment orientation and opinions on ESG
Public sentiment orientation on ESG was judged by analyzing the
comments on ESG-related posts. Fig. 14 illustrates that positive com­
ments accounted for 66.03%, while neutral and negative comments took
up 17.37% and 16.60%, respectively.
As shown on the right side of Fig. 14, the top 20 related words were
extracted using the TF-IDF algorithm. Regarding positive comments, the
most relevant terms included ‘corporate’, ‘social’, ‘investment’, ‘envi­
ronment’, ‘development’, ‘governance’, ‘responsibility’, and ‘idea’, as
well as words related to affirmative sentiments such as ‘attention’,
‘value’, ‘hope’, and ‘support’. As a comment with positive sentiments
written, ‘After understanding the concept of ESG, I realized its value. ESG is
an important standard to measure whether listed companies have enough
social responsibility. Corporate development is closely related to
Table 2
Typical posts under ESG-based topics and their attention level.
ESG-based Examples of Weibo posts
topics
ESG investment I found that the largest US ESG index fund has a
large position in the energy sector. The overall
weight is the same as the S&P index, and some
energy companies are even more weighted. I
wonder if ESG investors have seen the details of
these funds.
ESG disclosure *** ESG report (2019) disclosed the company’s
latest achievements in the ESG field. ***
elevated sustainable development to the
strategic level and incorporated it into the
business development plan. *** committed to
implementing sustainable development actions
through the value chain and building a high-
tech comprehensive enterprise that creates
products for a better life around the world.
ESG rating In 2020, ### ESG rating achieved a historic
improvement, with the MSCI rating score rising
from 3.4 to 4.1. It was also the only food
company in mainland China incorporated into
the top 30 of the Hang Seng Corporate
Sustainability Index.
ESG notion and ESG is not only a social responsibility but also an
practice internal driving force for corporate
development. With this internal drive, you will
focus on building a good labor-management
relationship. Enterprises are not charities, nor
can they become sweatshops.
Notes: *** and ### represent the hidden company names.
Journal of Cleaner Production 387 (2023) 135840
environmental changes. I hope that everyone can pay attention to such low-
carbon investment.’
According to the keywords related to neutral sentiments, it is
demonstrated that ESG investing risks, ESG-based regulations, and ESG
rating criteria were also mentioned. For example, some people argued
that ESG rating standards should be developed by national departments
due to different country-level conditions. Others proposed that gov­
ernments should strengthen supervision of ESG-related information
disclosed by firms to avoid misleading consumers.
Concerning the comments with negative sentiments, the keywords
consisted of ‘corporate’, ‘risk’, ‘investment’, ‘finance’, ‘rating’, ‘social’,
‘value’, ‘fund’, ‘disclosure’, as well as skeptical words like ‘fraud’ and
‘stunt’. Many people showing negative attitudes towards ESG have
questioned the actual profit of ESG investing and viewed ESG as
corporate marketing means. On the other hand, another focus of nega­
tive sentiment towards ESG was related to ESG ratings. Some argued
that ESG ratings failed to reflect the actual corporate performance. They
even debated that the more ESG information a company disclosed, the
worse its ESG rating result could be.
5. Discussion
5.1. Chinese public perceptions of ESG
This study explored Chinese public perceptions of ESG by applying
the SMA framework to analyze social media data collected from the
mainstream platform in China, Sina Weibo. Specifically, we investigated
the characteristics of users concerned about ESG, discovered ESG-based
topics often discussed in Weibo posts and examined corresponding
attention, as well as identified public sentiment orientation and opinions
on ESG from their comments.
At the individual level, there exists an unbalanced regional distri­
bution of personal users concerned about ESG. People in economically
developed areas show more attention to ESG, which is consistent with
the general impression. In developed provinces like Beijing, Shanghai,
and Guangdong, the governments are easier to publicize and advance
such a new concept of sustainability benefiting from the advanced
infrastructure and high level of citizens’ education and cognition
(Huang et al., 2022). Moreover, economically developed regions often
have a sounder financial system, which is viewed as a significant catalyst
Attention for ESG advancement (Ng et al., 2020). Institutional users who care
level about ESG involve different media agencies. With the growing demand
392
for disclosures on ESG initiatives, it was estimated that there was a 70%
increase in ESG coverage in 2020 in some influential media organiza­
tions worldwide (Cognito, 2020). The results also reveal that the
financial industry is another industry paying much attention to ESG. It
was argued that with ESG investment moving to the mainstream, banks
575 and financial institutions are pressured to take responsibility for ESG
issues in their investment behavior (Mörth, 2014). In addition, Deng and
Cheng (2019) reported that financial organizations are more likely to
use ESG data to measure corporate performance over time.
The analysis of ESG-related Weibo posts indicates an overall growth
in the chance of public exposure to different ESG-based topics, including
ESG investment, ESG disclosure, ESG rating, and ESG notion and prac­
tice. However, the increasing Weibo posts have not received the corre­
295
sponding growing attention. We have several hypotheses for what
caused the inconsistency between the Weibo post number and public
attention level. First, social media data are more volunteered than sur­
vey data from questionnaires and interviews (Wang et al., 2018; Chen
and Zhang, 2022). Recipients autonomously determine whether to
659
respond to messages. Even people concerned about ESG might not make
retweets, likes, or comments. Second, the personalization mechanism of
social media platforms continuously interferes with content transmitted
to users, making some posts disproportionately visible (Stasi, 2019;
Gaisbauer et al., 2021). In addition to the objective reasons caused by
the characteristics of social media data, inconsistency might result from
12
M. Liu et al.
Fig. 14. Sentiment distribution of Weibo comments and the top 20 related words of each sentiment.
the purposeful content of ESG-based posts. It is observed that many posts
are associated with ESG investment. A previous study has found that
ESG information is designed to appeal to investor audiences but not the
general public, making most nonprofessionals unaware of ESG (Rino,
2021).
Based on the sentiment results, we see relatively positive sentiments
from the Chinese public about ESG. About 66.03% of comments on ESG-
based Weibo posts express positive attitudes. The finding is aligned with
a survey developed by the China Social Investment Forum (China SIF),
which claimed that the majority (over 80%) of the individuals in China
were optimistic about ESG development and willing to incorporate ESG
into their investing decisions (China SSE, 2020). Another ten-country
global survey also indicated that concern about ESG issues has been a
global trend and ESG was of most importance to those in China
compared with other countries, such as Japan, Germany, and the UK
(SECNewgate, 2021).
Despite the general positiveness, some negative sentiments still exist
in the comments on ESG-related Weibo posts. People with negative at­
titudes often use terms such as “stunt” and “fraud” to comment on ESG
and regard ESG initiatives as firms’ marketing ploys for profit. Such
skepticism seems to be associated with the potential of greenwashing
(Saxton et al., 2017; Sisson, 2017). Greenwashing is a marketing tech­
nique that provides misleading information and creates an illusion of
being environmental-friendly. Cho et al. (2017) suggested that adverse
cognition of ESG practice as greenwashing, a means to gloss over a
corporate image, might intensify public skepticism, even when a firm is
authentically doing something good. Apart from the effect of green­
washing, the cognitive bias of ESG might result from the public’s limited
knowledge of ESG. From the assumptions of “knowledge theory”, in­
dividuals’ judgments are conditioned on the related knowledge they
own (Guan et al., 2019). The survey conducted by SECNewgate found
that less than one in five respondents said they really understand what
ESG is (SECNewgate, 2021). Similarly, the previous work of China SIF
showed that about 89% of the individuals are unfamiliar with ESG, and
their acceptance of ESG is affected by the corresponding knowledge
level.
Last but not least, inferred from the keywords extracted from com­
ments, the negative sentiment might also come from doubts and
13
Journal of Cleaner Production 387 (2023) 135840
questions about ESG ratings. Dimson et al. (2020) proposed that there is
significant inconsistency among ESG scores provided by various ESG
rating agencies, which can undermine social trust. Avramov et al. (2021)
demonstrated that ESG rating uncertainty has adverse effects on
risk-return trade-off, social impact, and economic welfare using objec­
tive evidence. Moreover, limited transparency of ESG ratings can also
make the public less likely to engage in ESG-related practices. As the
European Banking Federation (EBF) said, it was hard to figure out the
methodology behind an ESG rating because the rating agencies view the
methodologies as their confidential and proprietary information (Azi­
zuddin, 2022). However, such a lack of transparency might inflame
message receivers’ suspicions about the validity and authenticity of in­
formation (Rino, 2021).
5.2. Theoretical and practical implications
Our empirical study supports the critical role of social media in
interpreting public perceptions of ESG and communicating business
sustainability. Consistent with the global trend, there is a growth in ESG-
related information available on the Chinese social media platform. A
gradual equilibrium in Weibo posts number under different topics shows
that people have no longer looked at ESG from one single point of view.
However, the increase in ESG-based Weibo posts seems not to receive
the corresponding feedback and attention. Public attention varies
dramatically in different ESG-based posts. For example, sustainable ac­
tions with the potential of greenwashing often spark a heated discussion,
even skeptics, distrust, and other negative sentiments. By contrast,
sharing professional ESG investment knowledge might barely cause a
ripple.
The findings have important implications for research on ESG or CSR
communication through social media. First, there is a significant need
for further investigations on public preferences for ESG information, i.e.,
the characteristics of posts that can generate public interest and atten­
tion. In the interconnected environment, meaningful public engagement
needs to be developed based on a sufficient understanding of public
preferences. Then, formulating appropriate ESG communication strate­
gies on social media also requires systematic analysis. Nowadays, the
misleading claims of greenwashing have intensified public skeptics and
M. Liu et al.
undermined their trust (Sisson, 2017). This problem is unfavorable,
especially for contentious industries like oil and gas. Saxton et al. (2017)
found that companies with genuine intent can well utilize social media
to deliver their sustainable actions, thereby reducing information
asymmetry and misunderstanding.
Based on the findings, this study also provides the following sug­
gestions to improve public attitudes towards ESG and promote ESG
advancement:
(1) Governments, news agencies, and other institutional users are
encouraged to further post ESG-related information on social
media platforms. It can be challenging for the general public to
accept anything new, especially when they have no idea how it
works. Hence, it is necessary to popularize ESG knowledge to
improve public perceptions and change the inherent biases to­
wards ESG. Moreover, ESG promoters should pay attention to
social media marketing strategies. They can utilize the celebrity
effect to spread the ESG concept on social media, especially in less
interested places. The sustainable notions conveyed by famous
figures are more likely to be accepted by the public.
(2) Governments should strengthen the regulation of ESG-related
information on social media and develop online rules of law.
Greenwashing misleading messages and information asymmetry
negate the public’s ability to tell whether a claimed ESG action is
really ESG. It is essential to help the public filter out fake infor­
mation and properly guide ESG-based topics on social media.
(3) Public priorities and preferences for ESG issues should be
considered when making ESG policies. Proactive policies that
give serious consideration to public perceptions might help
enhance the likelihood of public support. Policymakers also need
to improve ESG disclosure and transparency standards to reduce
the effect of information asymmetry between companies and the
outside public. Yet it is worth noting that ESG policies should
balance corporate interests and social expectations. Implement­
ing, complying, and reporting ESG is still viewed as a costly ex­
ercise without a clear payoff, especially for small and medium-
sized companies. Therefore, it is encouraged to increase policy
support for corporate ESG actions, and policies on ESG disclosure
are expected to be flexible and adaptive to different industries
and companies.
(4) It is necessary to develop a standardized ESG rating system
consistent with China’s national conditions. Inconsistency among
ESG rating results provided by different rating agencies makes
the public less likely to employ these data for their investment
decisions and further discourages ESG investment development.
Given the differences in country-level characteristics, a unified
ESG evaluation system combined with national conditions should
be considered to reduce uncertainty and improve the quality of
ESG rating.
6. Conclusions
The previous work highlights the importance of understanding
public perceptions of ESG to its advancement, but limited efforts have
been made to examine such understanding. Hence, this study applied a
research framework of social media analytics to explore the public
perceptions of ESG in China based on the social media data from Sina
Weibo.
The findings show regional differences in individual users concerned
about ESG. People in economically developed areas often pay more
attention to ESG. From the industry perspective, the industries with
large institutional users consist of media and entertainment, financials,
information technology, commercial service, and public management
and social organizations. The latent topics extracted from posts include
ESG investment, ESG disclosure, ESG rating, and ESG notion and prac­
tice. There is an overall growth in public exposure to different ESG-
14
Journal of Cleaner Production 387 (2023) 135840
based topics, as revealed by the trends. However, the increasing
Weibo post number has not obtained the corresponding growth in public
attention. According to the sentiment results, despite the general posi­
tiveness of the Chinese public about ESG, some people have negative
sentiments towards ESG. The possible reasons for negative sentiments
include the greenwashing effect, inadequate knowledge of ESG, as well
as inconsistency among ESG ratings and lack of transparency in rating
methods.
Based on the findings, this study also proposes several suggestions for
ESG implementation, including (1) taking full advantage of social media
in publicizing the ESG concept, (2) strengthening the regulation of ESG
information on social media, (3) taking public priorities and preferences
for ESG issues into consideration, and balancing corporate interests and
social expectations when making ESG policies, and (4) developing a
standardized ESG rating system consistent with national conditions.
The limitations and recommendations for future research are pro­
vided as follows. First, limited by the availability of user profiles, this
study only analyzed the geographic distribution of individual users and
industry distribution of institutional users when exploring the current
state of public concerned about ESG. Other user characteristics, such as
individual user gender, age, education level, institutional user size, and
geographical area, should also be considered in the future. Second, this
study focused more on analyzing information content but failed to
explore user relationships and information dissemination paths. Future
research can adopt social network analysis to identify opinion leaders
and examine the patterns of ESG-related information diffusion. Addi­
tionally, this study utilized the λ parameter to select the keywords
related to LDA topics. The λ parameter was determined merely based on
the interpretability of the topics, which was affected by researchers’
limited knowledge and cognition. Therefore, a more scientific approach
needs to be adopted to improve the objectivity of results.
Credit author statement
LIU, Muyang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis,
Writing – original draft. LUO, Xiaowei: Data Formal analysis and
curation. LU, Wei-Zhen: Reviewing and Editing, Supervision, Project
administration.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
The data that has been used is confidential.
Acknowledgment
This research was partly supported by Strategic Research Grant (PJ#
7005679, 7005564), City University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen Science
and Technology Innovation Committee Grant
(PJ#JCYJ20180507181647320).
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