Who Goes Digital, Who Stays Local: Generational Capital and Spatial Diffusion in Immigrant Business Platform Adoption

• In Event: International Migration Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 21. Second generation

Abstract

Abstract: This study examines the factors influencing social media platform adoption among immigrant business owners in Manhattan’s Chinatown, distinguishing between U.S.-based mainstream platforms and Chinese-language platforms as indicators of differential market orientation. Drawing on an original survey of 249 business owners and managers conducted in July–August 2025 — one of the most current datasets on post-pandemic immigrant entrepreneurship, we employ logistic regression, causal mediation analysis, and spatial lag models to investigate the roles of generational status, educational attainment, English proficiency, and spatial embeddedness in shaping platform adoption.
We find that the apparent second-generation advantage in U.S. social media adoption is fully mediated by educational attainment, with approximately 74 percent of the total generational effect operating through this pathway. English proficiency does not function as an independent mediating mechanism. In contrast, Chinese platform adoption is primarily structured by spatial location: proximity to core commercial corridors emerges as the key predictor, consistent with a threshold effect associated with tourist flows and co-ethnic commercial traffic. Spatial analysis further reveals significant neighborhood clustering in U.S. platform adoption (Moran’s I = 0.117, p = .002). Spatial lag models indicate a diffusion process driven by commercial imitation among geographically proximate businesses. Chinese platform adoption, by contrast, exhibits no spatial clustering, suggesting that it is shaped primarily by individual-level characteristics and community embeddedness rather than neighborhood contagion.
These findings contribute to scholarship on immigrant entrepreneurship and digital inequality by demonstrating that generational advantages in mainstream platform adoption are transmitted through the accumulation of educational capital, and by documenting a distinct spatial diffusion mechanism operating within ethnic enclave commercial contexts.

Authors

• Jiangnan Liu, University at Albany, SUNY

• Zai Liang, State University of New York at Albany