Socio-spatial Disparities of Tobacco Outlets in Edinburgh

Abstract

This paper joins spatial autocorrelation models (Global Moran's  index, Local Moran  index) to analyse the distribution of cigarette vending outlets in Edinburgh and utilises global regression (OLS) models and Geographically Weighted Regression models (GWR) to examine the spatial heterogeneity of fiscal and social factors that affect the distribution of retail outlets in Edinburgh. The results demonstrate that Edinburgh has a considerable spatial agglomeration of cigarette retail outlets, with a clear trend towards clustering in high and low-value areas of retail outlet distribution, showing significant geographical characteristics. The impact of each element on the distribution of cigarette retail outlets was analysed utilising the ranking of the elements in SIMD (The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation) as explanatory variables. It was established that data regions with a high ranking in education, skills, and training and those with a high ranking in geographic access to services revealed a positive trend in the density distribution of cigarette retail outlets, while data regions with a high ranking in housing and those with a high ranking in crime revealed a negative trend on the density distribution of cigarette retail outlets. The outcomes are different from prior observations, so this paper specifically analyses the differences in the extent to which each influencing element affects cigarette retail outlets in Edinburgh across data regions, which will supply a scientific basis for decreasing the prevalence of smoking, decreasing socio-economic inequalities in smoking, and increasing diverse local tobacco control intervention strategies.