The Hidden Terrains of Disparity: How Residential and Workplace Socioeconomic Status Shape Perceptions of Inequality

This study investigates how the socioeconomic levels of residential neighborhoods and workplaces shape individuals' perceptions of income inequality in urban settings. While previous research has focused primarily on residential contexts, we argue that a comprehensive understanding of urban inequality requires examining multiple activity spaces where residents regularly interact. Using geocoded data from the 2017 Shanghai Urban Neighborhood Survey and machine learning method, we explore the interplay between structural determinism and relative deprivation mechanisms in daily activity spaces. Our findings reveal that the relative deprivation explanation holds greater explanatory power. Notably, lower-income individuals working in high socioeconomic status neighborhoods exhibit heightened perceptions of income inequality compared to their higher-income counterparts. Furthermore, we examine whether socioeconomic neighborhood homogeneity reinforcement or heterogeneity sensitivity effects predominate. Results indicate that individuals experiencing discrepancies between the socioeconomic levels of their residential and work neighborhoods perceive larger income gaps than those in consistent socioeconomic environments. These findings underscore the complex dynamics of intra-urban socioeconomic inequality and its impact on residents' perceptions of income equality in rapidly urbanizing societies. By elucidating the intricate connections between social spatial structures, individual characteristics, and equality perceptions, this study contributes to a nuanced understanding of inequality perceptions in modern urban societies and offers valuable insights for urban policy development.