Anti-Asian racism resulted in a $7.4 billion loss for Asian restaurants in 2020
According to a new study from researchers from Boston College, the University of Michigan, and Microsoft Research, published January 19, 2023, in the Nature Human Behaviour journal, anti-Asian racism resulted in a $7.4 billion loss for Asian restaurants in 2020.
No surprise to many within the Asian community, avoidance of Asian restaurants began at the start of the pandemic in 2020. “Donald Trump and Trump-supporting Republicans and media began to refer to COVID-19 as the ‘China virus’ and explicitly blame the pandemic on China despite consistent criticism from Asian Americans and left-leaning media outlets. Between 16 March 2020 and 3 Jan 2021, Trump used the phrase ‘China virus’ or ‘Chinese virus’ in 54 separate tweets. This explicit blame on China by the politicians was then reinforced and further spread into the mainstream media outlets that rebroadcast this rhetoric. Recent research has demonstrated how social media also has a vital role in building and reproducing negative sentiment against marginalized groups,” the study says.
Here are key findings from the group’s study:
Anti-China internet searches began to surge during the pandemic including those related to politics (searches related to China and Communism), economics (searches related to China and debt), and searches related to negative stereotypes about Chinese people and culture.
Traffic to Chinese restaurants saw a drop in traffic by 10.9% while non-Chinese Asian restaurants saw a precipitous drop in traffic by 25%. This data supports the researchers’ hypothesis of ‘blame spillover’ which indicates that consumers misidentified Asian restaurants as Chinese or they categorically avoided Asian restaurants.
Zip-code-level data shows that support for former President Trump is associated with a higher avoidance of Asian restaurants.
Consumers most commonly blamed Asians, and specifically Chinese, for the spread of the pandemic and expressed fears of consuming Chinese food because of the idea that they could contract COVID-19 through food.
The misidentification of Asian restaurants is very high with 33% of Asian restaurants being mislabeled. Korean and Vietnamese restaurants were the most commonly mislabeled restaurants at 52% and 47%, respectively. Both of these were commonly identified as Chinese restaurants. Trump voters were most likely to misidentify restaurants with a misidentification rate of 36.4%.
