Spatial Structure and Spatial Interaction: 25 Years Later

In the 1970s, spatial autocorrelation (i.e., local distance and configuration effects) and distance decay (i.e., global distance effects) were suspected of being intermingled in spatial interaction model specifications. This convolution was first treated in a theoretical context by Curry (1972), with some subsequent debate (e.g., Curry, Griffith, and Sheppard 1975). This work was followed by a documentation of the convolution (e.g., Griffith and Jones 1980) and further theoretical treatment of the role spatial autocorrelation plays in spatial interaction modeling (e.g., Griffith 1982). But methodology did not exist at the time—or even soon thereafter—to easily or fully address spatial autocorrelation effects within spatial interaction model specifications, a contention attested to and demonstrated by the cumbersome and difficult-to-implement techniques employed by, for example, Bolduc, Laferrière, and Santarossa (1992, 1995) and Bolduc, Fortin, and Gordon (1997). Today, however, eigenfunction-based spatial filtering offers a methodology that can account for spatial autocorrelation effects within a spatial interaction model. This paper updates work from the early 1980s, extending it with spatial filtering methods.