Asian Restaurants Lost Billions in Revenue Due to Pandemic-Era Racism, Study Says

Asian Restaurants Lost Billions, in Revenue Due to Pandemic-Era, Racism, Study Says.

According to a recent study, a racially-driven stigma in the first year of the pandemic cost Asian restaurants in the United States an estimated $7.4 billion in revenue.

NBC reports that the study, published last week in the journal 'Nature Human Behavior,' found that Asian restaurants lost 18.4% more than other restaurants in 2020.

Following the outbreak of the pandemic, the U.S. saw numerous incidents of anti-Asian racism from harassment to direct violence.

According to Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition founded in response to growing racism, nearly 11,500 incidents were recorded between March 2020 and March 2022.

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When you have something like folks just choosing not to eat in a Chinese restaurant, that is something that’s a lot more subtle and under the surface, but it’s also a lot more common, Masha Krupenkin, assistant professor of political science at Boston College, via NBC.

According to the study's co-author, Masha Krupenkin, the relationship between partisanship and human behavior is one of the most important drivers of discrimination.

People tend to really strongly follow cues from their party leaders.

So Trump setting an example and calling COVID 'the China virus' and really laying blame on China, I think, was one of the key drivers of the effects that we saw, especially among Republicans, Masha Krupenkin, assistant professor of political science at Boston College, via NBC.

According to Krupenkin, the report found that non-Chinese Asian restaurants had even less traffic than Chinese restaurants amid the pandemic.

The team found that this spillover of consumer discrimination was caused by most people not knowing the difference between different Asian cuisines