Modeling interregional commodity flows with incorporating network autocorrelation in spatial interaction models: An application of the US interstate commodity flows

Spatial interaction models are frequently used to predict and explain interregional commodity flows. Studies suggest that the effects of spatial structure significantly influence spatial interaction models, often resulting in model misspecification. Competing destinations and intervening opportunities have been used to mitigate this issue. Some recent studies also show that the effects of spatial structure can be successfully modeled by incorporating network autocorrelation among flow data. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the existence of network autocorrelation among commodity origin–destination flow data and its effect on model estimation in spatial interaction models. This approach is demonstrated using commodity origin–destination flow data for 111 regions of the United States from the 2002 Commodity Flow Survey. The results empirically show how network autocorrelation affects modeling interregional flows and can be successfully captured in spatial autoregressive model specifications. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.