Distance and cosine measures of niche overlap

Niche overlap is increasingly used as a way of measuring the intensity of interorganizational competition. This paper examines and compares various distance and cosine measures of niche overlap. The analysis in this paper shows that Euclidean distance applied to the raw data as well as to transformed data is not an appropriate measure of niche overlap. An alternative measure from the cosine family is discussed and compared to Euclidean distance. Niche overlap theory promises to be a big leap forward in measuring competition in sociological studies of organizations. But meticulous attention to the measurement of overlap is needed to fulfill the promise. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.