An interval-valued carbon price forecasting method based on web search data and social media sentiment

Accurate carbon price prediction is a crucial task for the carbon trading market. Previous studies have ignored the impact of online data and are limited to point predictions, which brings challenges to the accurate forecasting of carbon prices. To address those issues, this paper proposes an interval-valued carbon price forecasting method based on web search data and social media sentiment. First, we collect web search data and social media sentiment to improve prediction performance by synthesizing multiple types of data information. Second, we employ principal component analysis (PCA) to preprocess high-dimensional web search data, and utilize BosonNLP for quantifying social media information, thereby enhancing the predictability of the dataset. Subsequently, a variational mode decomposition (VMD) is applied to the carbon price and online data, followed by utilizing particle swarm optimization support vector regression (PSO-SVR) to predict each sub-modes and summing them up to obtain the ultimate forecasting outcome. Finally, using carbon prices in Guangdong and Hubei provinces as case studies, the experimental results demonstrate that web search data and social media sentiment significantly enhance the predictive accuracy of interval-valued carbon prices. Furthermore, the proposed VMD-PSO-SVR outperforms other comparative models in the accuracy and reliability of interval-valued forecasting.