Analysis of the Relationship Between COVID-19 Infections and Web-Based Housing Searches
More details
Hide details
1
Departament of Spatial Analysis and Real Estate Market, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland
Submission date: 2022-07-18
Final revision date: 2022-08-26
Acceptance date: 2022-08-26
Publication date: 2022-12-09
REMV; 2022;30(4):89-102
HIGHLIGHTS
- internet user's activity could reflect collective behaviour
- google trends allow analysing of public interest in the housing market
- covid-19 infection increase negatively affects web searches for the keyword "butas" (dwelling) in Lithuania
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
The study used Google search query data on real estate interest for several countries in the Baltic area. The dynamics of public interest in housing have been compared to the dynamics of the COVID-19 infections in Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Sweden. This study uses the Vector autoregressive (VAR) model to forecast such time series. VAR is a multivariate linear time series model in which the endogenous variables in the system are lagged functions of the values of all endogenous variables. The increase in COVID-19 infections negatively affected society's interest in housing. The study used Google Trends and R software.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author expresses his sincere gratitude to the Journal Editor and the anonymous Reviewers who spent their valuable time providing constructive comments and assistance to improve the quality of this paper.