Exploring contemporary public perceptions of historical redlining practices in the United States

Redlining is a discriminatory practice of systematically denying loans or mortgages to residents in specific neighborhoods based on racial or ethnical composition. In current literature research, there is a lack of understanding of the public perceptions of impacts of historical redlining practices at large geographic scales. Although some social groups and organizations conducted surveys or interviews to obtain public perceptions of it on small groups of people in certain areas, our knowledge of the impacts of redlining is limited and may reflect bias. This study used geotagged tweets from 2011 to 2023 to investigate public perceptions of redlining practices in U.S. counties. Multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) was performed to explore both spatial heterogeneity and varying scales of associations between percentage of redlining-related geotagged tweets with negative sentiment and potential explanatory shaping factors in U.S. counties. Counties with a higher average household size, a higher percentage of people aged 45+, a lower homeownership rate, and a higher mobile home percentage have a significant association nationwide with more negative-sentiment expression in redlining-related tweets. However, counties with a lower insurance coverage are less likely to express negative sentiment in redlining-related tweets in some eastern U.S. counties, indicating a local significant association. The findings help people better understand the relationship between public perceptions of redlining practices and potential shaping factors. This study's methodology can also be applied to investigate public perspectives or perceptions on other controversial social topics.