A Causality Analysis of Societal Risk Perception and Stock Market Volatility in China

Modern China is undergoing a variety of social conflicts as the arrival of new era with the transformation of the principal contradiction. Then monitoring the society stable is a huge workload. Online societal risk perception is acquired by mapping on-line public concerns respectively into societal risk events including national security, economy & finance, public morals, daily life, social stability, government management, and resources & environment, and then provides one kind of measurement toward the society state. Obviously, stable and harmonious social situations are the basic guarantee for the healthy development of the stock market. Thus we concern whether the variations of the societal risk are related to stock market volatility. We study their relationships by two steps, first the relationships between search trends and societal risk perception; next the relationships between societal risk perception and stock volatility. The weekend and holiday effects in China stock market are taken into consideration. Three different econometric methods are explored to observe the impacts of variations of societal risk on Shanghai Composite Index and Shenzhen Composite Index. 3 major findings are addressed. Firstly, there exist causal relations between Baidu Index and societal risk perception. Secondly, the perception of finance & economy, social stability, and government management has distinguishing effects on the volatility of both Shanghai Composite Index and Shenzhen Composite Index. Thirdly, the weekend and holiday effects of societal risk perception on the stock market are verified. The research demonstrates that capturing societal risk based on on-line public concerns is feasible and meaningful.