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The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there is unequal treatment in hiring depending on whether a job applicant signals living in a bad (deprived) neighborhood or in a good (affluent) neighborhood.

The authors conducted a field experiment where fictitious job applications were sent to employers with an advertised vacancy. Each job application was randomly assigned a residential address in either a bad or a good neighborhood. The measured outcome is the fraction of invitations for a job interview (the callback rate).

The authors find no evidence of general neighborhood signaling effects. However, job applicants with a foreign background have callback rates that are 42 percent lower if they signal living in a bad neighborhood rather than in a good neighborhood. In addition, the authors find that applicants with commuting times longer than 90 minutes have lower callback rates, and this is unrelated to the neighborhood signaling effect.

Empirical evidence of causal neighborhood effects on labor market outcomes is scant, and causal evidence on the mechanisms involved is even more scant. The paper provides such evidence.

Micro-regeneration can effectively enhance a neighborhood’s commercial vitality and serve as a viable approach to boost economic benefits. However, the small scale of micro-regeneration efforts and the fragmented nature of information currently limit the availability of strong empirical evidence demonstrating its impact on neighborhood commercial vitality. The aim of the study was to examine the link between micro-regeneration and neighborhood commercial vitality, focusing on the average, time-lag, spatial spillover, and spatial heterogeneity effects.

Using the panel data set of 1,755 neighborhoods in Chongqing from 2016 to 2021 as the research sample, the difference-in-differences (DID) method was employed in this study to explore the impact micro-regeneration has on neighborhood commercial vitality.

The results illustrate that: (1) micro-regeneration can promote neighborhood commercial vitality in terms of the number and types of local consumption amenities by 27.76 and 5.89%, respectively, with no time-lag effect; (2) the positive spillovers can exist within the range of 5,000 meters–5,500 meters of regenerated neighborhoods; and (3) the effect of micro-regeneration on neighborhood commercial vitality can be greater in peripheral areas than in core areas of the city.

The findings fill the knowledge gap on the relationship between micro-regeneration and neighborhood commercial vitality. Additionally, the results on the time-lag effect, spatial spillover effects, and spatial heterogeneity provide practical implications that can support the government and private sector in developing temporal and spatial arrangements for micro-regeneration projects.

Studies repeatedly have found social disparities of health at many levels of spatial aggregation. A second body of empirical research, demonstrating relationships between an area's racial and class composition and its environmental conditions, has led to the rise of an environmental justice movement. However, few studies have connected these two sets of findings to ask whether social disparities in health outcomes are due to local environmental disparities. This chapter investigates whether the association between racial and socioeconomic composition and multiple health conditions across New York City zip codes is partly mediated by neighborhood physical, built, and social environments.

This paper assesses the strength of the evidence on the impact of the physical environment on mental health and well‐being. Using a systematic review methodology, quantitative and qualitative evaluative studies of the effect of the physical environment on child and adult mental health published in English between January 1990 and September 2005 were sought from citation databases. The physical environment was defined in terms of built or natural elements of residential or neighbourhood environments; mental health was defined in terms of psychological symptoms and diagnoses. A total of 99 papers were identified. The strength of the evidence varied and was strongest for the effects of urban birth (on risk of schizophrenia), rural residence (on risk of suicide for males), neighbourhood violence, housing and neighbourhood regeneration, and neighbourhood disorder. The strength of the evidence for an effect of poor housing on mental health was weaker. There was a lack of robust research, and of longitudinal research in many areas, and some aspects of the environment have been very little studied to date. The lack of evidence of environmental effects in some domains does not necessarily mean that there are no effects: rather, that they have not yet been studied or studied meaningfully.

This study seeks to answer (1) how perceived neighborhood collective efficacy and disorder affect residents' cooperation with the police, both directly and indirectly through perceptions of the police and (2) how Arab American ethnicity moderates the linkages between perceived collective efficacy, disorder and cooperation.

Relying on survey interview data from a probability sample of 414 residents in Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, MI and path model analysis, this study tests an explanatory model of public cooperation with the police that integrates both neighborhood and policing factors.

Perceived neighborhood disorder undermines residents' desires to cooperate, and this influence is chiefly direct. Meanwhile, although no significant total effect, perception of neighborhood collective efficacy does have a positive effect on cooperation through the mediator of positive assessment of police effectiveness. Further, collective efficacy has a direct, positive effect on cooperation among Arab Americans only. Finally, perceptions of police equal treatment and effectiveness, rather than procedural justice, are significant correlates of public cooperation.

This study contributes to the extremely limited literature on policing and Arab American communities. The findings can deepen the understanding on why and for which groups neighborhood context is related to cooperation with the police. Findings can also add to the knowledge base for designing policies and practices that help secure and promote public support and cooperation in both Arab and non-Arab communities.

This study uses a comprehensive theoretical framework that combines social cognitive theory and neighborhood effect to investigate the influence of neighborhood effects on farmers’ outcome expectations, observational learning and self-efficacy. This study aims is to analyze the mechanisms that underlie the adoption of social media by farmers for knowledge exchange in the agricultural context. Specifically, this research explores the role of neighborhood effects, outcome expectations, observational learning and self-efficacy in shaping farmers’ decision-making process regarding the use of social media platforms for exchanging agricultural knowledge.

The study data was collected through a sample survey conducted among 570 agricultural households residing in the provinces of Thai Nguyen, Cao Bang, Bac Kan and Phu Tho, located in the northern region of Vietnam. To analyze the data, structural equation modeling was used as the statistical technique of choice.

The findings of the study indicate a significant influence of neighborhood effects on outcome expectations, observational learning and self-efficacy. These factors, derived from social cognitive theory, also exhibit a positive association with farmers’ adoption of social media for knowledge exchange. Additionally, the study highlights that neighborhood contribute to a favorable adoption of social media among farmers via outcome expectations, observational learning, and self-efficacy.

The study is limited in examining farmers’ social media adoption for agriculture knowledge exchange in Northern mountainous area of Vietnam. This study could be replicated across various regions or nations, providing comparative insights into the adoption of social media among farmers for knowledge exchange.

The study findings suggest practical and innovative means to promote farmers’ social media adoption for agriculture knowledge exchange.

This study presents a pioneering approach by integrating social cognitive theory and neighborhood effect to elucidate the factors influencing farmers’ adoption of social media for the purpose of agriculture knowledge exchange.

Increasing concern about rising crime rates, high levels of unemployment and the anti-social behaviour of youth gangs that are concentrated within particular regions and neighbourhoods of cities has prompted renewed interest in governments to frame policies to create socially mixed cities. Recent riots experienced on social housing estates, including in France (St Denis, Poissy, Clichy-sous-bois), Australia (Macquarie Fields, Redfern in New South Wales) and Britain (Bestwood, Nottingham) have reinvigorated public and community debate into just what makes a functional neighbourhood. The nub of the debate about dysfunctional neighbourhoods is whether part of the problem is to be found in the lack of social mix of residents, that is, the homogeneity of the neighbourhoods in aspects such as housing tenure, ethnicity and socioeconomic characteristics of residents.

The relationship between religious belief and spousal choice in Nepal is examined, looking at how the importance that individuals place on their own religious faith influences their decision either to allow their parents and other relatives to arrange a marriage for them or to initiate their own love marriage. How the importance attached to religious faith within the individual’s family and neighborhood affects this decision, and how education modifies the relationship between religion and spousal choice are also looked at.

Ordinary least squares regression models are used to examine the relationship between spousal choice and key independent variables. Interaction terms are used to examine how education may moderate the relationship between personal, family, and neighborhood religious salience and spousal choice.

It is found that the effect of one’s neighbors’ faith operates differently based on one’s own level of education. The “moral communities” thesis is used to theorize that in neighborhoods where religion is regarded as very important, individuals need to expend more effort to maintain respectability, adhering to tradition by having arranged marriages. In neighborhoods where religion is less important, the weaker demands made by the “moral community” render individuals more free to choose their own spouses. For highly educated individuals, the effect of their neighbors’ religious belief is considerably reduced.

As Nepalis become more educated, they not only move out of the sphere of family influence, as discussed in previous research, but also away from being influenced by their neighbors.

Studies have suggested that entrepreneurship is a key mechanism for rejuvenating and facilitating economic growth in deprived areas. To provide further understanding of the persistently low entrepreneurial intentions found in deprived areas this chapter identifies key mechanisms and theoretical frameworks that link the formation of appropriate human capital to the prevailing environment, and that influences may flow in both directions. This contributes to the existing literature to provide a fuller understanding of interest to policy-makers of why past interventions have struggled to boost entrepreneurial intentions and where new interventions may be most effective in generating more positive entrepreneurial intentions in deprived areas.