From Panic to Provisions: Unraveling Consumer Emotions Amidst the Food Delivery Rush During COVID-19 Community Lockdown

Abstract

Modeling consumers’ decision-making processes during crises and the collective impact of their emotions is crucial for building future resilience. In this paper, we collected and analyzed social media, news, and financial market data of gig-economy-based food and grocery platforms. These platforms emerged as lifelines during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. Leveraging NLP, statistical, and time-series methods, we concluded the direction and magnitude of consumer emotion changes during the crisis and observed that consumer emotions (disgust and fear) following service changes influence the stock performance of these platforms.