2024 Volume 15 Pages 1077-1094
The risk awareness shaped by the media is a critical factor affecting the public's preventive behavior during the pandemic. For Taiwanese people, the news provides essential information about COVID-19; however, media channels in most research discussing public transit volume are confined to social media. The study proposes a framework to analyze the interaction between ridership of Taipei Metro, COVID-19 cases, and its related news by vector autoregression model, which can capture each interaction between variables in former periods. Results reveal that the number of COVID-19 cases and related news have opposite lag impacts on Taipei Metro riding. In addition, compared with the number of COVID-19 cases, pandemic news has a more significant impact on the ridership of Taipei Metro. By considering the insights derived from this research, policymakers can better manage public response, promoting preventive behaviors and mitigating public panic among citizens through strategically disseminating pandemic-related news.
