"Is Long-distance Hiking an Emotional Roller Coaster?" Evaluating Emotions and Weather Effects on the Appalachian Trail

The growing prevalence of emotion research in human-computer interaction highlights the crucial role of emotion in understanding humans' behavioral states and experiences. Online media, especially community blogs, enable reflection of people's emotions on a large scale, while emotion recognition offers profound insights into the underlying reasons behind the expressed emotions. Within these capabilities, this paper uses an emotion recognition model and topic modeling analysis to examine Appalachian Trail long-distance hikers' blogs on the Trail Journals platform and identify key driving factors regarding expressed emotions. We also examined the influence of weather, as an inseparable factor of outdoor activities, on hikers' emotions and its nuances in long-distance hiking. The findings emphasize the emotional aspect of long-distance hiking, which can facilitate mental support from the community in the future. We discuss the usefulness of blogs in gaining insight into writers conveying their emotional experiences.