1.) What neighborhoods in Los Angeles have the most listings and why?

    The visualization below displays the number of Airbnb listings in each neighborhood, the neighborhood with the most listings is Hollywood, followed by Venice, Long Beach, Santa Monica, and Downtown. As we explore the reasoning behind the popularity of Airbnb in these specific areas, we look towards an article written by Max Belasco, which explains that despite Airbnb’s claim that their business model allows working families to afford their homes in an increasingly competitive and pricey market, the majority of Airbnb’s revenue within the county has been for entire home rentals that appear to be hotel-ized (Belasco 2021).

    This is consistent with our visualization on the right, which shows that most Airbnbs in Los Angeles are entire homes or apartments. Belasco’s observation that most of Airbnb’s revenue comes from “hotel-ized” listings shows that Airbnb is a market competitor in the hotel industry, meaning that similar to hotels, there are more listings in areas that are tourism heavy. This would explain why areas like Hollywood, a major tourist attraction, have significantly more listings than other, more residential neighborhoods. Additionally, in an article titled “Analyzing and Predicting the Spatial Penetration of Airbnb in U.S. Cities,” the authors concluded that Airbnbs tend to populate a creative sector closer to the city center of each city regardless of population composition, size, or wealth (Quattrone et. al 2018).

    Sure enough, the neighborhoods in Los Angeles with the highest number of Airbnb listings, such as Hollywood and Venice, are thriving cultural areas of the city. Overall, from our analysis of the Airbnb data and research, the neighborhoods in Los Angeles with the most Airbnb listings are those that have a high number of tourists and those that are considered creative sectors of the city. 

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    The map of Airbnb listings shows that Hollywood contains the most number of listings, closely followed by other big-name neighborhoods such as Venice, Long Beach, and more. This is in-line with the findings in “Analyzing and Predicting the Spatial Penetration of Airbnb in U.S. Cities,” which claims that Airbnbs tend to populate among the more creative sectors of cities. Hollywood is arguably the most creative sector of LA, and even the country, as the entertainment industry hub of the nation. Thus, listings tending to populate in these areas as expected.  

2.) Is there a relationship between Airbnb density and the socioeconomic status of local communities? How does Airbnb affect socioeconomic changes in those neighborhoods?

    This research question investigates if the relationship between Airbnb density and the socioeconomic status of different neighborhoods is statistically significant. In our case, since the majority of the neighborhoods in LA cover similar sizes of areas, by comparing the number of Airbnb in each neighborhood, we would have a clear insight into Airbnb density. To simplify the research question, we choose the median annual household income in each neighborhood as the main indicator for the local socioeconomic status, while considering tourism and commercial activities as minor indicators at the same time.

  First, we will focus on if the increasing number of Airbnb listings would impact the social order within a neighborhood. The visualization above presents the number of Airbnb in each neighborhood in Los Angeles: the longer the bar for a neighborhood is, the more Airbnb households are located inside that neighborhood. In the graph, we have bars of 3 different colors, with each color corresponding to a neighborhood group.

    From the previous data analysis, we knew that there are more than 40k Airbnb households listed in our dataset; together with the graph above, we can see that the distribution of these Airbnb households is not equally located in each neighborhood. We can see that Hollywood is the neighborhood with the most Airbnb households. There are 4 neighborhoods (Hollywood, Venice, Long Beach, and Santa Monica) with more than 1000 Airbnb households, while the majority of neighborhoods only have less than 200 Airbnb households.

    This is potentially due to the high volume of travelers visiting the tourist attractions in these neighborhoods. A high volume of tourists could contribute to more commercial activities but also potentially more violence in these neighborhoods, which could severely deflate the public security level of these neighborhoods.

    This inference is bolstered by the study of a group of researchers, who argue that neighborhoods with increasing numbers of Airbnb listings tend to have more violence in the neighborhood within the following years (Ke et al. 2021). They then refuted this finding in their study, claiming that the higher frequency of violent crimes is due to the erosion of a neighborhood, rather than the previous assumption that Airbnb listings bring in tourism, which consequently brings crime along with it.
   
    Therefore, we couldn’t form the conclusion that higher Airbnb density is related to a relatively turbulent neighborhood, and there might be other factors that result in the increasing violence cases.

     Now we will divert from the social impact of Airbnb on local communities and focus on how it influences the economic status of neighborhoods instead. The visualization below presents a scatter plot between the median annual household income and the number of Airbnb listings in each neighborhood. Similar to the previous plot, we also use 3 different colors to represent different neighborhood groups that each neighborhood belongs to. From the graph above, there is a slightly negative trend between median income level and Airbnb counts, which implies that having more Airbnb households in a neighborhood is associated with a lower income level for local communities.

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    This finding is consistent with a journal article by Koster and his colleagues, which argues that the increasing number of short-term rentals such as Airbnb would increase housing and rental prices, while reducing the demand for housing in the neighborhoods where these STRs are densely populated (Koster et al. 2021). However, when it comes to the statistical significance of this linear trend, we have to admit that the correlation between number of Airbnb and median income level is not as significant as we thought, since the p-value for this linear model is larger than our alpha level of 0.05 and the Pearson correlation coefficient is relatively small.

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    Therefore, we can say that an increasing number of Airbnb in neighborhoods is associated with lower income levels for the local residents, but this correlation is relatively weak. In a more realistic case, having more short-term rentals in a neighborhood might, to some extent, have some impact on the real estate market and disturb the labor structure, argued by Dayne Lee in one of his researches (Lee, 2016). The low price short-term rentals in these communities offer people a more affordable place to temporarily stay, hampering people’s willingness to purchase a house or signing long-term lease with local landlords. Meanwhile, as more people switch to short-term rental contracts, they are now of higher mobility as they could simply move to a different place when their leases expire. In one word, although the impact might not be quite significant, we can see how Airbnb and other short-term rental businesses would gradually undermine the local economy, especially local housing businesses.

3.) How does the Airbnb price vary across different neighborhood groups in Los Angeles and how is Airbnb price compared to the local hotel price?

  The map above presents the Airbnb price for each neighborhood in Los Angeles. Each dot represents the Airbnb household at that particular location, and for each dot, we have its precise location, neighborhood, neighborhood group, and the price listed. The color for each dot indicates which neighborhood group this Airbnb is located in, and the smaller the size of the dot is, the lower the price of that Airbnb household is. Since the average hotel price in Los Angeles falls in the range from $73 to $288, with an average of $135, having dots on the map with the smallest size indicates that the Airbnb at that location would have a price equal to or lower than $135, which is the average hotel price in LA.

  With a closer look to the map, we notice that most of the dots have the smallest size and Airbnb price of at most $135, and they seem to disperse equally throughout each neighborhood group, which means the majority of Airbnbs in LA have a price lower than the average hotel price, and these low-priced Airbnbs are equally located in each neighborhood group. 

    And for regions with famous travel destinations, including neighborhoods like Hollywood and Malibu, Airbnbs are more densely located and the price of Airbnb could vary vastly: while the majority of dots are still small, there are some dots that are particularly large, meaning that Airbnbs at these places could be especially costly. Therefore, we can say that the Airbnb prices are generally lower than the average hotel price in LA; but for visitors that are planning to stay around tourist spots, they might need to reconsider their budget limit before selecting an Airbnb.

Conclusion

    Through our data analysis, we reaffirm our prior statement that Airbnb listings in popular Los Angeles neighborhoods contribute to major shifts in the socioeconomic characteristics of these neighborhoods.

    According to data sourced from the US Census Bureau, the most populated neighborhoods in Los Angeles include (in chronological order) South Los Angeles, Southeast Los Angeles, Hollywood, Van Nuys, and Koreatown. When we observed the Los Angeles neighborhoods with the most Airbnb listings, we found that the ratio of Airbnbs in each neighborhood often did not correspond with the overall population of their respective neighborhood. The neighborhoods with the most Airbnb listings include the very popular and more tourist-prone areas such as Hollywood, Venice, Long Beach, and Santa Monica. The frequency of listings gives insight into where tourists are more attracted to stay, as people typically rent AirBnbs when on vacation or while visiting areas where they do not reside.

    Therefore, the neighborhoods with the most Airbnb listings in Los Angeles reflect those that are the most popular with tourists. This shows direct evidence of the Los Angeles tourism industry, which has been proven to impact communities in areas by distorting the housing market, reducing the affordable housing supply, and encouraging harmful gentrification that removes local individuals from spaces in which they belong.

    Analyzing the density and price of Airbnb listings in each neighborhood can further confirm these findings, as being able to pinpoint high-density areas opens doors for further research into how a high volume of tourists affects these specific neighborhoods while higher prices give insight into which tourist destinations are most desirable.

    While a high volume of tourists could contribute to more commercial activities and a thriving tourist-based economy, consequences such as more opportunities for crime or violent activities leave room for exploration. Further studies would give more insight into how digital peer-to-peer tourism companies like Airbnb directly influence neighborhood trends such as economic status, overall population, and gentrification over time.