English

An alternative to Moran's I for spatial autocorrelation

Statistics Theory 2015-01-27 v1 Statistics Theory

Abstract

Moran's I statistic, a popular measure of spatial autocorrelation, is revisited. The exact range of Moran's I is given as a function of spatial weights matrix. We demonstrate that some spatial weights matrices lead the absolute value of upper (lower) bound larger than 1 and that others lead the lower bound larger than -0.5. Thus Moran's I is unlike Pearson's correlation coefficient. It is also pointed out that some spatial weights matrices do not allow Moran's I to take positive values regardless of observations. An alternative measure with exact range [-1,1] is proposed through a monotone transformation of Moran's I.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1501.06260,
  title  = {An alternative to Moran's I for spatial autocorrelation},
  author = {Yuzo Maruyama},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1501.06260},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

6 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T08:12:36.397Z