Geography Matters Research Articles

The Influence of Personality on Music Preference Across Geographic Locations

How does personality affect music preference? The Big Five Theory of Personality is used to answer this question as it is the most widely used scientific method of assessing personality. The Big 5 comprises five broad trait dimensions: extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. Most studies on music preference involve separating music into different genres and assessing preference. The main correlates of the Big 5 and music preference are discussed. Also, some research has shown that geography matters in the link between personality and music preference, while others do not.

Why the history and philosophy of geography matter: Louise Michel's radical, anticolonial, and pluralist geographies

In this short paper, I contend that the history and philosophy of geography should be considered as an indispensable scholarly field to nourish both theoretical speculations about geography and ongoing scholars' political and social engagement towards critical, radical, decolonial, feminist and antiracist geographies. I argue that rediscovering ‘other geographical traditions’ is paramount to these scholarly and political agendas. After briefly summarising my political and theoretical references, I discuss the example of the work of anarchist, feminist and anticolonial activist Louise Michel (1830–1905) to make the case for the inclusion of new figures and ideas in the field of new decolonial, multilingual and pluralist histories of geography.

Reducing CO2 emissions in a peer-to-peer distributed payment network: Does geography matter in the lightning network?

Bitcoin, Ethereum and other blockchain-related globally distributed peer-to-peer networks have become an important payment infrastructure. Because they are naturally decentralized and distributed, they can consume resources unevenly, raising some sustainability concerns. The Lightning Network (LN) is a growing but understudied second layer network built on blockchain infrastructure and designed to make fast and anonymous global multi-pass payments. At a conservative estimate, this infrastructure produces about 1.4 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year. Thus, in this paper, we aim to justify a general approach to consider topology and the geographical distribution of this type of network in the design and investigate ways to prevent excessive CO2 emissions. While the LN itself shows great promise as a scalable and widely adopted solution, there has been limited research exploring its structure, distribution, and performance from a sustainability perspective. This study contributes to analyzing the LN’s topology, geospatial distribution, and pathfinding algorithms. By examining real-world data snapshots of the LN, we investigate the relationship between payment routes that are produced by native pathfinding algorithms, geographical distribution of the network and the carbon intensity of electricity in the countries involved in the final payment paths. Our analysis highlights the important structural and geospatial characteristics of the LN and reveals a significant correlation between the length of payment paths, geographical distance, carbon intensity of electricity and other features. To tackle sustainability concerns, we propose an original pathfinding heuristic that effectively prevents excessive carbon dioxide emissions in LN infrastructure. Our computational experiments have shown that, under optimal parameters, such a heuristic can prevent the associated CO2 emissions both directly – by limiting path lengths, number of intercountry and intercontinental hops – and indirectly — by giving more weight to channels covering places with lower carbon intensity of electricity. Technically, the highest result it achieves is as follows: the average path length reduced by 28.7%, the average number of intercontinental hops by 28.7%, the average number of intercountry hops by 21.3%, and the average carbon intensity by 9.4%. This solution also maintains a compromise between the average locktimes and fee ratios. In conclusion, we discuss that geographic distribution is a rather important characteristic of decentralized peer-to-peer payment networks, which is usually underestimated at the network design stage.

Geography matters: The impact of geographic expansion on bank performance during the Great Recession

Geographic expansion negatively impacts bank outcomes during recessions. While increases in average bank-to-branch distance for a given bank have a small positive impact on bank performance, increases in average bank-to-branch distance across all banks negatively impact performance as a result of aggregate spillovers. These findings support the existence of economically substantive geographic information asymmetries in banking, emphasizing the need for an explicit consideration of the spatial implications of banking (de-)regulation.

Why does geography matter in big dam removal projects? Lessons from a comparison between the Sélune and Elwha River cases

The dam removal movement is resulting in numerous projects worldwide, especially in Western countries. Whether completed or in progress, these undertakings often trigger conflict. Nearly 30 years after the initiation of the first major projects, this article examines the conditions for the local appropriation of dam removal projects. From the perspective of two pioneering and emblematic projects in France (Sélune River) and the United States (Elwha River), this article highlights the geographic specificities of dam removal projects carried out in European rural areas. The aim is to discuss how to implement ambitious ecological projects without running the risk of local people losing their sensitive relationship (history, experience, landscape) with the areas once they have been restored. In other words, ecological restoration should not result in a loss of meaning and quality in the relationship between local people and newly restored spaces; it should instead enrich it. In fact, the removal of a dam is not just a technical project; it profoundly affects landscapes, disrupting uses and creating new places. We identify the modalities by which a new space is produced and appropriated by local populations based on a comparison of the relevant spaces (national park vs. rural agricultural space), the populations involved (river users, Native American tribes, residents, and NGOs), and, finally, the governance processes and interactions between expertise and politics, all to highlight the need to take geographical context into account. Based on a detailed knowledge of the formation of the Sélune dam removal project, which has been the subject of continuous participant observation since 2011, we examine these projects’ singularities and commonalities to identify the factors that contribute to their success. This study highlights the importance of the spatial scale at which the dam removal project should be framed, the role of government, and the importance of considering people’s attachment to local places. Finally, this comparison makes recommendations for improving the socio-territorial quality of ecological projects, especially in Europe, with the aim of ensuring their sustainability and success.

Geography matters for learning and innovation in natural resource-based activities: regional differences in technical linkages across Argentine agriculture

ABSTRACT Although innovation is present in all economic sectors, innovation surveys and empirical research are biased towards high-tech activities. Meanwhile, quantitative studies on agricultural innovation systems (AIS) usually neglect the regional dimension. As in many developing countries, Argentine agriculture seems to have evolved towards a new techno-productive paradigm, but no study has yet analyzed its geographical scope. This article proposes a regional-structural approach to study where, how and with whom technical linkages and interactive learning processes are developed. Using under-explored data from the 2018 National Agricultural Census and multivariate analysis techniques, the results reveal significant regional differences in technical linkages and show that the new techno-productive paradigm is limited to the Pampean region. While private sources of knowledge are mainly concentrated in central areas, technical linkages with public agencies are geographically widespread. Acknowledging these regional heterogeneities poses different policy challenges for promoting AIS in developing countries with large and diverse territories.

Does geography matter? Implications for future tourism research in light of COVID-19

Due to the 2019 new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, tourism is undergoing fundamental changes that are affecting tourism research. This situation calls for in-depth analyses of tourism research. Scholars have already published review studies on COVID-19-related research within the tourism field; however, these studies do not connect findings, such as the research focus, research methodology and target group, to form a research profile, and the geographical patterns of the findings are not identified. study, COVID-19-related tourism studies were collected and analyzed in depth following the Preferred Reporting Items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) method. In addition, data-driven methods, such as spatial multilayer networks, frequent patterns and content-based analyses, were applied to identify research profiles and their geographic patterns. This study pointed out the role of geographic patterns in tourism research, going beyond the research of the authors. Moreover, topics, focus destinations, applied methodologies and employed data sources have relevant geographic patterns. Four dominant research profiles that show that a shift can be observed in tourism research toward data sources and research methods were identified. Due to COVID-19, the strengthening of the application of quantitative methods and employment of secondary data sources are needed.

Reimagining flood plain development with geography at heart

ABSTRACT Claims that the catastrophic flooding events of 2022 which devastated the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales were unprecedented are demonstrated here to be ill-informed. Additionally, flood mitigation efforts will not be able to protect Lismore and surrounding communities from the ravages of future floods. It is essential that geographical realities be at the heart of planning decisions to protect flood prone communities in future. The inescapable fact is that catastrophic floods will recur in the region. The lesson for this region, and for others throughout Australia which are subject to severe flooding, is that planned withdrawal of critical services, commercial premises and vulnerable housing from the flood plain is the only sure way to protect people, their homes and livelihoods from repeated devastation. Geography matters indeed.

The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America

The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America

Why corporate political geography matters for stock returns

What are the drivers of the impressive performance derived from investment strategies designed to exploit firms' geographic proximity to political power (PAI)? High-Low PAI arbitrage portfolios yield between 3.4% and 3.9% per year, net of transaction costs. Consistent with the view that it is grounded on policy uncertainty, the PAI effect on returns only exists among firms lacking political connections. Abnormal stock returns of politically inactive firms from high PAI states reflect mispricing that seems to arise from flawed policy uncertainty resolution caused by the spillover of political optimism in local stock pricing and opportunistic managers’ propensity to exploit uncertainty.

Geography and Strategy in Developing Countries

Geography plays a central role in firms’ strategic choices. Deciding where to locate operations and employees, as well as whether to move or not, can have critical performance implications. At the same time, a growing literature in strategy shows that conditions in developing economies often necessitate different firm strategies. This raises an important question at the intersection of these literatures: how do choices about geography shape firm strategy in developing economies? In this symposium, we explore this new area of research through a set of cutting edge studies, each of which examines a different way in which geography and firm strategy interact in developing economies. Our discussant, Professor Lamar Pierce, will build on these presentations and his own expertise on firm strategy in Africa to synthesize and critique the studies. Following this, the host will encourage a lively debate about how geography matters for strategy and organization theory in developing economies. Location, Gendered Constraints and Business Performance Presenter: Solene Delecourt; Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley Employee Work Novelty and Communication in a Hybrid Remote Workplace Presenter: Tarun Khanna; Harvard U. Presenter: Kyle Schirmann; Harvard Business School Presenter: Christos Makridis; MIT Sloan School of Management The Impact of Capital Constraints on Strategic Misconduct Presenter: Fulton C. Eaglin; Harvard Business School Won’t you be my neighbor? Geography, networking, and entrepreneur performance in Togo Presenter: Stefan Dimitriadis; U. of Toronto, Rotman School of Management Presenter: Rembrand Michael Koning; Harvard Business School

Economic Geography, Politics, and the World Trade Regime

AbstractAlthough globalization and the world trade regime have reduced the significance of distance between countries, within countries geography matters now more than ever. Inside countries’ borders, economic activities, such as production and employment, occur unevenly across space. As a result, international trade impacts parts of a country differently. Some areas benefit from rising trade, while others experience reductions in local wages and employment as a result of increased import competition. Because regions’ experience of globalization varies, public opinion about trade differs across geographic areas within countries. Voters living in regions advantaged by trade are more likely to support economic openness, while voters living in regions negatively impacted by trade are more skeptical of the benefits of globalization. The geographic disparities in public attitudes towards trade often align with salient political cleavages. As a result, debates over trade have become increasingly polarized in many countries, which may threaten states’ continued economic openness as well as their engagement with, and even support for, the world trade regime.

Infrastructure threshold and economic growth in Africa: do income level and geography matter?

Infrastructure threshold and economic growth in Africa: do income level and geography matter?

Geography matters for sanitation! Spatial heterogeneity of the district‐level correlates of open defecation in India

This paper quantitatively analyzes the spatial heterogeneity of district‐level correlates of open defecation in rural India. We employ standard non‐spatial regression, spatially explicit regressions and multi‐scale geographically weighted regression to compare the stability of measurable correlates of open defecation across these different methods as well as across analyzed spatial units. Attributes like ownership of household assets, drinking water inaccessibility and prevalent literacy rates were identified as the most stable district‐level correlates of open defecation. Our results also demonstrated the relevance of our hypotheses about (a) possible negative sanitation externalities stemming from the co‐concentration of Scheduled Caste communities and other communities in densely populated rural districts, and (b) possible positive sanitation externalities stemming from the co‐concentration of Muslim and non‐Muslim communities in densely populated districts. Overall, however, our analyses demonstrate notable spatial clustering and significant spatial non‐stationarity of examined variables. Therefore, in our opinion, research findings that ignore spatial heterogeneity of sanitation drivers provide incomplete information for policy development and implementation.

Geography matters to disability: regional disparity of bathing difficulty among older adults in China

Bathing is a major type of disability among older adults. While studies on bathing difficulties have recently started to go beyond the limitations of the human body to examine bathroom amenities; researchers have rarely considered the environment beyond the bathroom. This study explored the regional disparities in bathing disability among older adults in China. Using data from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey from 1998 to 2018, random-effects logistic regressions were performed to examine how bathing difficulties differed across regions among older adults in China. We found that older adults residing in the northern regions were significantly more likely to experience bathing disability compared to those from the South after controlling for confounding variables. Women and the oldest-old were also the most likely to experience bathing disabilities. Within the Northern regions itself, individuals from the Northeast stood out for having the highest likelihood of experiencing bathing disability. Interestingly, this regional disparity only existed for bathing disability and not the other Activities of Daily Living (ADL) items. It is concluded that the large regional disparity could be due to both climate differences and uneven economic development across the different regions in China. As bathing is a highly environment-dependent activity, this study highlights the potential for policy interventions to reduce the prevalence of bathing disability among older adults through improving the bathing environment. Additionally, we aim to put forth the notion that disability research should move towards analyses of specific disability items rather than an undifferentiated ADL index.

Theorising liminal states of health: A spatio‐temporal analysis of undiagnosis and anticipatory diagnosis in the shadow of toxic pollution

AbstractThis paper demonstrates how greater engagement with liminality – as a concept and lived experience – can expand scholarly conceptualisations of health/disease in contaminated spaces. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Sri Lanka's dry zone between 2013 and 2017, I focus on residents' encounters with chronic kidney disease diagnosis in a region where the causes of illness are uncertain, the consequences of disease are often deadly, and the possibilities of developing sickness in the future are both unpredictable and ever‐present. Specifically, I examine how residents of kidney disease hotspots negotiate various attempts to categorise them as being, or not being, healthy in ways that give rise to experiences of liminality. Building on work in feminist disability studies, I conceptualise “undiagnosis” and “anticipatory diagnosis” as two such liminal states of health that reconfigure medical and social practices in the dry zone. As part of this analysis, I explain why residents are so reluctant to get screened for kidney disease and demonstrate how they strategically mobilise moments of “undiagnosis” to resist patient subjectivities and prolong existing lifeways. I then turn to a discussion of anticipatory diagnosis, which describes the practice of re‐classifying residents of disease hotspots who are not yet sick as embodying the potential to become ill at any time. Frequently deployed by the state, medical practitioners, and non‐dry zone communities, I demonstrate how this practice collapses categories of “at‐risk” and “diseased” in external categorisations of residents' future health status. In short, liminality comes to be embodied through the constant anticipation of disease despite uncertainty about who will actually become sick and why. Tying these experiences together, I elucidate how geography matters to the constitution of liminal states of health and crucially demonstrate how this liminality helps reproduce place attachments as well as forms of geographic differentiation in the shadow of toxic contamination.

Why geography matters to the economic history of India

AbstractThat geography shapes long‐run economic change is almost an axiom in economic history, but there is neither adequate understanding nor much agreement about how this influence works. This article is an attempt to contextualise Indian economic history against what we now know of this influence. It is also an attempt to define the geographical condition of the South Asia region in a manner compatible with the purpose of economic history, which is to explain the deep roots of economic growth and inequality.

Measuring well-being in Colombian departments. The role of geography and demography

This paper provides a composite indicator of well-being for the 33 Colombian departments in the year 2016. The indicator is built by adapting the well-known OECD Better Life Index to the regional level, and includes the dimensions of income, health, education, safety, housing, environment, labour market, and civic engagement and governance. As to the methodology, Data Envelopment Analysis and Multi-Criteria Decision-Making techniques are employed, an approach which enables a comparison of well-being across departments and the construction of rankings. The results yield several take-away messages. First, there are substantial disparities in well-being across Colombian departments. Second, despite the fact that average well-being in Colombia is relatively low, the population is concentrated in the departments with the highest well-being levels. Third, geography matters, as neighbouring departments have similar well-being levels, giving rise to a core-periphery duality. Fourth, well-being generally improves and disparities decline when purely economic dimensions (income and labour market) are excluded from the composite indicator.

A note on income inequality at the state level

The purpose of this paper is to consider how measures of income inequality change over time when the geographic scale of the assessment is taken into account. Using Internal Revenue Service (IRS) records at the state level for the adjusted gross income by tax paying unit and the Gini coefficient (GC), it is clear geography matters. Comparing the estimates of the Gini coefficient at the national level in 2008, 2016, and 2018 (the last year with IRS data available), I find there are small, but statistically significant, increases in income inequality. Comparing GC estimates for 2008 to 2016 at the state level, there is a difference in the direction of the significant changes in the estimated Gini coefficients. 58.8% of the states experienced significant increases in inequality comparing these two years, while 27.4% had significant decreases. This pattern reverses comparing 2016 to 2018. 43.1% experienced statistically significant decreases and 35.3% significant increases.

COVID-19 in Toronto: A Spatial Exploratory Analysis

COVID-19 has had a significant impact on a global scale. Evident signs of spatial-explicit characteristics have been noted. Nevertheless, publicly available data are scarce, impeding a complete picture of the locational impacts of COVID-19. This paper aimed to assess, confirm, and validate several geographical attributes of the geography of the pandemic. A spatial modeling framework defined whether there was a clear spatial profile to COVID-19 and the key socio-economic characteristics of the distribution in Toronto. A stepwise backward regression model was generated within a geographical information systems framework to establish the key variables influencing the spread of COVID-19 in Toronto. Further to this analysis, spatial autocorrelation was performed at the global and local levels, followed by an error and lag spatial regression to understand which explanatory framework best explained disease spread. The findings support that COVID-19 is strongly spatially explicit and that geography matters in preventing spread. Social injustice, infrastructure, and neighborhood cohesion are evident characteristics of the increasing spread and incidence of COVID-19. Mitigation of incidents can be carried out by intertwining local policies with spatial monitoring strategies at the neighborhood level throughout large cities, ensuring open data and adequacy of information management within the knowledge chain.