No country for model minorities: Evidence of discrimination against Asian noncitizen immigrants in the U.S. nursing home market

Abstract

Although public administration scholars have long been studying discriminative behavior of frontline servants of public service organizations, whether and to what extent Asians and noncitizen immigrants may suffer from frontline discrimination in the United States lacks evidential support. To fill this gap, we conducted a corresponding field experiment in the U.S. nursing home market (N = 6428). Our findings identify substantial discrimination against Asians and noncitizen immigrants. Holding other factors constant, nursing homes with long‐term care services in the United States are less responsive to and less likely to offer services to Asians and noncitizen immigrants, compared to Whites and citizens, respectively. Such discrimination is observed in all public, private for‐profit, and nonprofit nursing homes, whereas private for‐profit nursing homes demonstrated less discrimination. This study has implications for describing frontline discrimination in government‐regulated public service organizations and for scholarly understanding of the mechanism of such discrimination.