Implications for spatial non-stationarity and the neighborhood effect averaging problem (NEAP) in green inequality research: evidence from three states in the USA
Sophiya Gyanwali, Shashank Karki, Kee Moon Jang, Tom Crawford, Mengxi Zhang, Junghwan Kim
{"title":"Implications for spatial non-stationarity and the neighborhood effect averaging problem (NEAP) in green inequality research: evidence from three states in the USA","authors":"Sophiya Gyanwali, Shashank Karki, Kee Moon Jang, Tom Crawford, Mengxi Zhang, Junghwan Kim","doi":"10.1007/s10109-024-00448-x","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Recent studies on green space exposure have argued that overlooking human mobility could lead to erroneous exposure estimates and their associated inequality. However, these studies are limited as they focused on single cities and did not investigate multiple cities, which could exhibit variations in people’s mobility patterns and the spatial distribution of green spaces. Moreover, previous studies focused mainly on large-sized cities while overlooking other areas, such as small-sized cities and rural neighborhoods. In other words, it remains unclear the potential spatial non-stationarity issues in estimating green space exposure inequality. To fill these significant research gaps, we utilized commute data of 31,862 people from Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. The deep learning technique was used to extract green spaces from street-view images to estimate people’s home-based and mobility-based green exposure levels. The results showed that the overall inequality in exposure levels reduced when people’s mobility was considered compared to the inequality based on home-based exposure levels, implying the neighborhood effect averaging problem (NEAP). Correlation coefficients between individual exposure levels and their social vulnerability indices demonstrated mixed and complex patterns regarding neighborhood type and size, demonstrating the presence of spatial non-stationarity. Our results underscore the crucial role of mobility in exposure assessments and the spatial non-stationarity issue when evaluating exposure inequalities. The results imply that local-specific studies are urgently needed to develop local policies to alleviate inequality in exposure precisely.</p>","PeriodicalId":47245,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Geographical Systems","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Geographical Systems","FirstCategoryId":"89","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10109-024-00448-x","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"GEOGRAPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Recent studies on green space exposure have argued that overlooking human mobility could lead to erroneous exposure estimates and their associated inequality. However, these studies are limited as they focused on single cities and did not investigate multiple cities, which could exhibit variations in people’s mobility patterns and the spatial distribution of green spaces. Moreover, previous studies focused mainly on large-sized cities while overlooking other areas, such as small-sized cities and rural neighborhoods. In other words, it remains unclear the potential spatial non-stationarity issues in estimating green space exposure inequality. To fill these significant research gaps, we utilized commute data of 31,862 people from Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. The deep learning technique was used to extract green spaces from street-view images to estimate people’s home-based and mobility-based green exposure levels. The results showed that the overall inequality in exposure levels reduced when people’s mobility was considered compared to the inequality based on home-based exposure levels, implying the neighborhood effect averaging problem (NEAP). Correlation coefficients between individual exposure levels and their social vulnerability indices demonstrated mixed and complex patterns regarding neighborhood type and size, demonstrating the presence of spatial non-stationarity. Our results underscore the crucial role of mobility in exposure assessments and the spatial non-stationarity issue when evaluating exposure inequalities. The results imply that local-specific studies are urgently needed to develop local policies to alleviate inequality in exposure precisely.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Geographical Systems (JGS) is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed academic journal that aims to encourage and promote high-quality scholarship on new theoretical or empirical results, models and methods in the social sciences. It solicits original papers with a spatial dimension that can be of interest to social scientists. Coverage includes regional science, economic geography, spatial economics, regional and urban economics, GIScience and GeoComputation, big data and machine learning. Spatial analysis, spatial econometrics and statistics are strongly represented.
One of the distinctive features of the journal is its concern for the interface between modeling, statistical techniques and spatial issues in a wide spectrum of related fields. An important goal of the journal is to encourage a spatial perspective in the social sciences that emphasizes geographical space as a relevant dimension to our understanding of socio-economic phenomena.
Contributions should be of high-quality, be technically well-crafted, make a substantial contribution to the subject and contain a spatial dimension. The journal also aims to publish, review and survey articles that make recent theoretical and methodological developments more readily accessible to the audience of the journal.
All papers of this journal have undergone rigorous double-blind peer-review, based on initial editor screening and with at least two peer reviewers.
Officially cited as J Geogr Syst