Does Quality Matter in Local Consumption Amenities? An Empirical Investigation with Yelp

Kuang, Chun

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2606775

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…However, more recent scholarship has suggested that proximity to urban amenities and more walkable environments are increasingly desirable traits, placing renewed demand on more accessible, central city locations. This trend has been particularly acute in the recovery period following the Great Recession (Couture and Handbury 2015;Kuang 2017;Myers and Gearin 2001). Beyond these supply and demand mechanisms, the likelihood that a neighborhood will undergo socioeconomic changes and, in particular, ascent, is also driven by other external factors including government investments in new infrastructure, the marketing of neighborhoods by realtors to spur interest, and the actions of local residents to resist changes (Zuk et al 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who's Moving In? A Longitudinal Analysis of Home Purchase Loan Borrowers in New Transit Neighborhoods

Delmelle

Nilsson

Schuch

2020

Geographical Analysis

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This article examines the characteristics of residents moving into new rail transit neighborhoods using longitudinal, individual-level data from the Housing Mortgage Disclosure Act. To disentangle the role of transit from other neighborhood amenities that may give rise to shifts in the socioeconomic or demographic profile of homebuyers, an exploratory text analysis is first performed on property advertisements in transit-adjacent neighborhoods. This informs the creation of variables for our models that estimate the probability of an applicant applying for a loan by race and income, and highlights where light rail is most prominently advertised as an amenity. We do not find that the announcement of a new light rail line significantly alters the income profile of loan applicants. Rather, proximity to the center city is a more important determinant in attracting higher income applicants. We do find that the announcement of the transit line is significant in explaining changes in the racial profile of applicants. Postannouncement, White applicants are significantly more likely to apply for loans in transit-adjacent neighborhoods, while Blacks are significantly less likely to. As for other amenities, the walkability of a neighborhood is significant in predicting where White applicants are more likely to apply for home purchase loans.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who's Moving In? A Longitudinal Analysis of Home Purchase Loan Borrowers in New Transit Neighborhoods

Delmelle

Nilsson

Schuch

2020

Geographical Analysis

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“…It is virtually impossible to include in any one study the vast and differing variety of private and public lifestyle amenities that draw people to cities. Typically, researchers have chosen which ones to use, such as restaurants, bars, or gyms (e.g., Couture & Handbury, 2017;GKS, 2001;Kuang, 2017). In addition to being subjective ex ante, these sets of amenities cannot be comprehensive.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beautiful city: Leisure amenities and urban growth

Carlino

Sáiz

2019

Journal of Regional Science

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Modern urban economic theory and policymakers are coming to see the provision of consumer‐leisure amenities as a way to attract population, especially the highly skilled and their employers. However, past studies have arguably only provided indirect evidence of the importance of leisure amenities for urban development. In this paper, we propose and validate the number of tourist trips and the number of crowdsourced picturesque locations as measures of consumer revealed preferences for local lifestyle amenities. Urban population growth in the 1990–2010 period was about 10% points (about one standard deviation) higher in a metro area that was perceived as twice more picturesque. This measure ties with low taxes as the most important predictor of urban population growth. “Beautiful cities” disproportionally attracted highly educated individuals and experienced faster housing price appreciation, especially in supply‐inelastic markets. In contrast to the generally declining trend of the American central city, neighborhoods that were close to central recreational districts have experienced economic growth, although at the cost of minority displacement.

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“…Recent works have highlighted the potential for bias in not measuring amenities on dimensions of quality and variety in addition to availability. For example, Davis, Dingel, Monras, and Morales (2019) and Kuang (2017) have used crowd-sourced reviews on the website Yelp.com to augment establishment counts of local consumption opportunities with a measure of quality. For one thing, Yelp reviews are disproportionately concentrated in certain sectors (e.g., restaurants are reviewed more often than dry cleaners) and certain areas (e.g., local businesses in large cities are reviewed more often than those in smaller towns).…”

Section: Collect Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

A revealed preference index of urban amenities: Using travel demand as a proxy

Broxterman

Kuang

2019

Journal of Regional Science

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We introduce an index of urban amenities based on hotel night stays that can rank most US metros for the years 1990 through 2015. This naive index can be used on its own to study changes in amenity level or with other measures to reduce omitted variable bias. Researchers can also use the index to create panel datasets from more sophisticated cross‐sectional indexes. Empirical testing shows the bundle of amenities associated with hotel stays has substantial effects on variation in housing prices across cities and time, validating our proxy variable approach. Testing for an association with wages is inconclusive.

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Does Quality Matter in Local Consumption Amenities? An Empirical Investigation with Yelp

Cited by 6 publications

References 32 publications

Who's Moving In? A Longitudinal Analysis of Home Purchase Loan Borrowers in New Transit Neighborhoods

Who's Moving In? A Longitudinal Analysis of Home Purchase Loan Borrowers in New Transit Neighborhoods

Beautiful city: Leisure amenities and urban growth

A revealed preference index of urban amenities: Using travel demand as a proxy

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