Valuing ecological benefits in ecological restoration of abandoned railways based on social media analytics

The scale of abandoned traditional railways in China and worldwide has been progressively increasing. While Western developed countries have generally focused on optimizing the utilization of such disused railway resources, research and practical efforts concerning the ecological restoration of abandoned railways in China remain in their nascent stages. This study proposes an evaluation framework for assessing the ecological restoration effectiveness of abandoned railways, incorporating public satisfaction as a key metric. The framework addresses a critical gap in conventional ecological restoration assessments, which often overlook the social perception of ecosystem services, while also filling a research void in the ecological benefit evaluation of abandoned railways. Regulating and supporting services were quantified using market price, replacement cost, and equivalent factor methods. Cultural services were evaluated through a modified travel cost method, incorporating social media analysis and sentiment analysis to quantify and weight public satisfaction. As a case study, this research examines the ecological restoration of the abandoned Zhangjiakou section of China’s first railway, the Jing-Zhang Railway, now repurposed as the Zhangjiakou Industrial Culture Theme Park. Applying the proposed framework, the ecosystem service value of the restored railway in 2023 was estimated at 1.565855 million CNY, with cultural services contributing the highest proportion (74.99%). Additionally, public satisfaction demonstrated measurable improvement. The findings validate the efficacy of ecological restoration strategies for abandoned railways and provide direct empirical support for policymakers in the conservation, utilization, and optimized management of such resources.