Study Links Decline to COVID Pandemic-Fueled Discrimination
By BOSTON COLLEGE
According to Boston College Assistant Professor of Political
Science Masha Krupenkin, who is a co-author of the study, Asian restaurants
experienced a loss of 18.4 percent more revenue compared to non-Asian
restaurants.
The findings begin to put a finer point on the broad economic
costs of anti-Asian discrimination during the pandemic and the role of
politicians who focused blame on China, where the coronavirus emerged in late
2019.
Attitudes towards Chinese and non-Chinese Asian food declined
precipitously during the pandemic and this change in attitudes was driven by a
mix of assigning blame for COVID-19 spread to Asians and experiencing fear of
Chinese food, the researchers report.
“The Covid-19 pandemic originated in China,” said Krupenkin. “Many actors in US politics and media, especially those that were ideologically conservative, emphasized the connection between covid and China as a way of placing blame for the pandemic. At the same time, there was a sharp increase in incidents of discrimination and violence against Asian-Americans.”
The pandemic effectively delivered a “shock” to consumer
discrimination against Chinese and other Asian restaurants, survey data, online
search trends, and consumer cellular device mobility data studied by the team
revealed.
“Our analysis estimates that COVID-related stigma and anti-Asian hate cost Asian American businesses $7.42 billion in lost revenue in 2020, highlighting how negative sentiment towards foreign entities can spillover into consumer discrimination targeting domestic minority groups,” said co-author Justin T. Huang, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan.
“These patterns echo how Muslim Americans faced widespread
discrimination, hate, and stigma post-9/11 and exemplify how some American
minority groups are perceived through the lens of the perpetual foreigner
stereotype.”
There were political aspects to the downturn in business,
according to the team. A range of data found that anti-Asian discrimination was
stronger in areas that had a higher percentage of residents who voted for
Donald Trump in 2016.
According to the organization Stop AAPI Hate, there were almost
11,000 hate incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders reported to
the organization between March 2020 and December 2021.
“While there’s been research on violence against Asian-Americans,
most acts of discrimination are more subtle,” said Krupenkin. “We set out to
measure one of these more subtle forms of discrimination – consumer
discrimination. This allowed us to examine a much more common – and
economically meaningful – form of discrimination against Asian-Americans.”
The team – which also included Julia Lee of the University of
Michigan and David Rothschild of Microsoft Research – was surprised to find
that anti-China bias among consumers also affected restaurants serving cuisine
from other Asian cultures.
Consumers would sometimes misidentify other Asian restaurants as
Chinese, leading to decreased visits to those restaurants as well.
“Trump and conservative media had very thoroughly connected Covid
to China specifically, so it was surprising to see a decrease in visits to
other Asian restaurants as well,” Krupenkin said. “We tested this more
thoroughly and found that many Americans misidentify other Asian restaurants as
Chinese, which likely explains the spillover effects we saw.”
Parsing unique economic challenges faced by Asian Americans during
the COVID-19 pandemic, the team believes the research has substantial
implications for the study of consumer discrimination and stigmatization in
public health communications.
Krupenkin said the researchers hope to further examine and connect
patterns of discrimination to negative media narratives about specific groups.
Reference: “The cost of anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19
pandemic” by Justin T. Huang, Masha Krupenkin, David Rothschild and Julia Lee
Cunningham, 19 January 2023, Nature Human Behaviour.
DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01493-6
