Analysing stakeholder engagement as a response to social media content on sustainable shipping using topic modelling and grounded theory

Social media can help understand key topics among shipping stakeholders regarding sustainability information, especially how it is received and disseminated by the audience. However, little is known about how sustainable shipping stakeholders engage with different topic categories and the desired solutions underlying their engagement patterns. This study addresses this gap by capturing LinkedIn posts related to sustainable shipping through a keyword-driven retrieval strategy, using the latent Dirichlet allocation model for topic modelling. We evaluate each cluster’s characteristics based on the grounded theory and summarise the most popular topics. Stakeholder responses to these topics are then identified using the stimulus-organism-response theory. Regression analysis are conducted, revealing that transportation infrastructure is the sole topic with a significant positive association with stakeholder engagement, suggesting that single-topic effects may be limited. Grounded theory analysis further identifies regulatory uncertainty, transition costs, and social recognition as core sources of stakeholder pressure, alongside corresponding governance solutions. This study thus provides a replicable methodological framework and theoretical insights to support stakeholder participation in sustainable shipping.