{"title":"The Causal Effect of Gun Violence on Everyday Mobility Patterns Across US Neighborhoods.","authors":"Karl Vachuska, Masoud Movahed","doi":"10.1007/s40980-025-00139-1","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Gun violence takes an enormous toll on neighborhoods and their residents in important ways. While research has identified that violence makes neighborhoods less appealing and livable, few studies have fully quantified the effect of violence on neighborhoods' vitality and dynamism. In this study, we introduce the notion of 'neighborhood activity,' which we measure by the unique number of everyday visitors those neighborhoods receive from residents of <i>other</i> neighborhoods. Drawing on a large geographically-coded dataset of 30,000 gun violence incidents across US neighborhoods in conjunction with daily mobility pattern data based on 45 million mobile devices, we apply a quasi-experimental method to estimate the impact of gun violence on the number of visitors neighborhoods receive. We find that gun violence reduces neighborhoods' visibility significantly, but its consequences are disproportionately distributed among non-White neighborhoods that are far less popular to begin with. Our estimation results indicate that gun violence cost neighborhoods approximately 9 million visitors in the year 2019 alone.</p><p><strong>Supplementary information: </strong>The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40980-025-00139-1.</p>","PeriodicalId":43022,"journal":{"name":"Spatial Demography","volume":"13 1","pages":"7"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12267329/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Spatial Demography","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40980-025-00139-1","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2025/7/16 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"DEMOGRAPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Gun violence takes an enormous toll on neighborhoods and their residents in important ways. While research has identified that violence makes neighborhoods less appealing and livable, few studies have fully quantified the effect of violence on neighborhoods' vitality and dynamism. In this study, we introduce the notion of 'neighborhood activity,' which we measure by the unique number of everyday visitors those neighborhoods receive from residents of other neighborhoods. Drawing on a large geographically-coded dataset of 30,000 gun violence incidents across US neighborhoods in conjunction with daily mobility pattern data based on 45 million mobile devices, we apply a quasi-experimental method to estimate the impact of gun violence on the number of visitors neighborhoods receive. We find that gun violence reduces neighborhoods' visibility significantly, but its consequences are disproportionately distributed among non-White neighborhoods that are far less popular to begin with. Our estimation results indicate that gun violence cost neighborhoods approximately 9 million visitors in the year 2019 alone.
Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40980-025-00139-1.
期刊介绍:
Spatial Demography focuses on understanding the spatial and spatiotemporal dimension of demographic processes. More specifically, the journal is interested in submissions that include the innovative use and adoption of spatial concepts, geospatial data, spatial technologies, and spatial analytic methods that further our understanding of demographic and policy-related related questions. The journal publishes both substantive and methodological papers from across the discipline of demography and its related fields (including economics, geography, sociology, anthropology, environmental science) and in applications ranging from local to global scale. In addition to research articles the journal will consider for publication review essays, book reviews, and reports/reviews on data, software, and instructional resources.