Chinatowns: Indirect Casualties of the Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic greatly reduced business activities, yet the negative effect was not homogeneous. We study how sentiment towards China in US major cities impact their Chinatown visits, utilizing mobility data at the census tract level and sentiment analysis from ProQuest news articles. Difference-in-difference analysis indicates that the Chinatowns in cities where the COVID-related new articles generally expressing negative sentiment towards China experienced a greater reduction in the number of visits. The result is corroborated by a placebo test that examines the number of visits to Little Italy, another type of ethnic neighborhood whose visits do not seem to be influenced by the sentiment towards China. The disparity in Chinatown visits persists across various sentiment measurement methods and varies by demographic group.