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When to use commuting zones? An empirical description of spatial autocorrelation in U.S. counties versus commuting zones
U.S. Commuting Zones (CZs) are an aggregation of county-level data that researchers commonly use to create less arbitrary spatial entities and to reduce spatial autocorrelation. However, by further aggregating data, researchers lose point data and the associated detail. Thus, the choice between usin...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9278745/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35830393 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0270303 |
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author | Carpenter, Craig Wesley Lotspeich-Yadao, Michael C. Tolbert, Charles M. |
author_facet | Carpenter, Craig Wesley Lotspeich-Yadao, Michael C. Tolbert, Charles M. |
author_sort | Carpenter, Craig Wesley |
collection | PubMed |
description | U.S. Commuting Zones (CZs) are an aggregation of county-level data that researchers commonly use to create less arbitrary spatial entities and to reduce spatial autocorrelation. However, by further aggregating data, researchers lose point data and the associated detail. Thus, the choice between using counties or CZs often remains subjective with insufficient empirical evidence guiding researchers in the choice. This article categorizes regional data as entrepreneurial, economic, social, demographic, or industrial and tests for the existence of local spatial autocorrelation in county and CZ data. We find CZs often reduce—but do not eliminate and can even increase—spatial autocorrelation for variables across categories. We then test the potential for regional variation in spatial autocorrelation with a series of maps and find variation based on the variable of interest. We conclude that the use of CZs does not eliminate the need to test for spatial autocorrection, but CZs may be useful for reducing spatial autocorrelation in many cases. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9278745 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-92787452022-07-14 When to use commuting zones? An empirical description of spatial autocorrelation in U.S. counties versus commuting zones Carpenter, Craig Wesley Lotspeich-Yadao, Michael C. Tolbert, Charles M. PLoS One Research Article U.S. Commuting Zones (CZs) are an aggregation of county-level data that researchers commonly use to create less arbitrary spatial entities and to reduce spatial autocorrelation. However, by further aggregating data, researchers lose point data and the associated detail. Thus, the choice between using counties or CZs often remains subjective with insufficient empirical evidence guiding researchers in the choice. This article categorizes regional data as entrepreneurial, economic, social, demographic, or industrial and tests for the existence of local spatial autocorrelation in county and CZ data. We find CZs often reduce—but do not eliminate and can even increase—spatial autocorrelation for variables across categories. We then test the potential for regional variation in spatial autocorrelation with a series of maps and find variation based on the variable of interest. We conclude that the use of CZs does not eliminate the need to test for spatial autocorrection, but CZs may be useful for reducing spatial autocorrelation in many cases. Public Library of Science 2022-07-13 /pmc/articles/PMC9278745/ /pubmed/35830393 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0270303 Text en © 2022 Carpenter et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Carpenter, Craig Wesley Lotspeich-Yadao, Michael C. Tolbert, Charles M. When to use commuting zones? An empirical description of spatial autocorrelation in U.S. counties versus commuting zones |
title | When to use commuting zones? An empirical description of spatial autocorrelation in U.S. counties versus commuting zones |
title_full | When to use commuting zones? An empirical description of spatial autocorrelation in U.S. counties versus commuting zones |
title_fullStr | When to use commuting zones? An empirical description of spatial autocorrelation in U.S. counties versus commuting zones |
title_full_unstemmed | When to use commuting zones? An empirical description of spatial autocorrelation in U.S. counties versus commuting zones |
title_short | When to use commuting zones? An empirical description of spatial autocorrelation in U.S. counties versus commuting zones |
title_sort | when to use commuting zones? an empirical description of spatial autocorrelation in u.s. counties versus commuting zones |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9278745/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35830393 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0270303 |
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