Nexus between Twitter-based sentiment and tourism sector performance amid COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the steps taken to contain its spread resulted in a decline in tourism sector stock prices. Using linear and quantile regressions, we examine the impact of Twitter-based investor sentiment for COVID-19 and Twitter-based sentiment towards uncertainty on the performance of tourism stocks. The findings indicate a heterogenous effect of tweets and Twitter economic uncertainty on tourism sector equity returns with a major impact on the lower quantiles.