Leveraging Social Listening for Public Policy Evaluation: 119 Analyzing Public Opinion on Senior Housing in Macau Using AI- Powered Content Analysis

In the digital era, advanced social research methods, such as AI-powered content analysis and data mining, present new opportunities for capturing public opinion on critical social issues. This paper explores the public opinion and discourse regarding the Macau SAR government's public senior housing project. Targeting senior homeowners, this pilot initiative offers hotel-like public housing designed to provide age-friendly environments, especially for seniors living in aging tenement buildings, which hinder their ability to age in place. We use “social listening”, a combination of automated web crawling and human-augmented intelligence with keyword filtering, to identify public perceptions of the Macau SAR government's public senior housing project and explore the factors influencing senior residents’ relocation decisions. Our mixed-methods approach incorporates quantitative and qualitative insights from 1,846 valid samples collected from 2019 to 2023 across various online platforms, including social media, news outlets, government press releases, and community association websites. This research captures user-generated and pressgenerated content, followed by machine and human coding for comprehensive content analysis. Findings reveal key challenges for senior residents “aging in place”, including physical mobility and safety hazards in aging buildings. The public discourse around resource allocation highlights complex tensions between government-led marketization and social welfare development strategies. Concerns about entry requirements and financial pressure prominently affect seniors’ relocation decisions. This research demonstrates the value of social listening in capturing public opinion and discourse through a comprehensive and unobtrusive lens compared to traditional methods, offering methodological innovations for sociological research and valuable insights for public policy evaluation.