Do Internet Search Data Help Forecast Air Passenger Demand? Evidence From China’s Airports

Before making travel plans, people often use the Internet to collect relevant information to help themselves make better decisions. Among the numerous information search channels, Internet search engine is used by the vast number of travelers because of its low cost and high efficiency. To a large extent, Internet search behavior is the external manifestation of users’ psychological activities, reflecting their concerns, needs and preferences. Therefore, Internet search data can reflect the air passenger demand information to a certain extent. In this manuscript, a novel decomposition ensemble model is proposed to discuss the role of Internet search data in air passenger demand forecasting. In the empirical study, the relevant data of Shanghai Pudong International Airport and Beijing Capital International Airport are taken as samples. The results show that the proposed forecasting model can integrate the advantages of decomposition-ensemble strategy and deep learning algorithm, and achieve more accurate and reliable prediction results than all benchmark models. This further indicates that adding Internet search data into the forecasting model can effectively improve the prediction performance of air passenger demand, and can provide scientific and reliable decision support for air transport management.