Abstract

A “college town” is a unique urban landscape in America and displays different features from other urban areas. As a result, retailers located in college towns have faced different situations during the COVID-19 pandemic. In our thesis, we investigated the daily footprint data of 157 retailers in 38 identified college towns from 2018 to 2020. Our study contributes to the research on the economic consequences of college town retailers in the situation of a global pandemic. To be specific, we explore two core research questions: (1) how does the university footprint interact with spatial location and public transit in affecting the retailer footprint? And (2) what moderating effects did government containment and health index exert upon the customer footprints? Our study indicates that the university footprints, distance to university, and public transit percentage had a positive, negligible, and negative impact on store visits, respectively. Furthermore, the positive effect of university visits on store visits decreases as store-university distance increases but has little correlation with percent of public transit. Moreover, we find that the intensity of containment and health index strengthens the negative effect exerted by store-university distance upon the positive correlation between university visits and store visits. In contrast, the effects of the university visits and percent of public transit on store visits do not vary with containment and health index. This research provides essential information that can be utilized by government officials and retail managers to better respond to a global pandemic and prepare for the recovery after pandemic.