Mapping Cash Advance Businesses in the Sacramento Region
Author Loan Braswell American River College Geography 350: Data Acquisition in GIS Fall 2016
Abstract Cash advance businesses are mostly located in the urban areas of Sacramento, and none are located in the top 75 wealthiest zip codes of Sacramento.
Introduction Mapping cash advance businesses in the Sacramento region to see where these businesses are in relation to household income or other demographic data.
Background What is a cash advance? Cash advances, also referred to as payday loans or personal loans, are intended to cover financial emergencies until your next payday or sooner. Source: Ace Cash Express
	Short Term Lending Rates Source: Ace Cash Express
Methods I used Google Earth to obtain cash advance location data points as a kmz file that I converted to a shapefile. Then I published the shapefile as a feature service to my school ArcGIS online account and created a web map with the cash advance layers and added layers from Esri’s living atlas. Then I used that web map to build a web map application. I used the web map to set up the look of the layers; i.e. symbology, layers, and pop-up table attributes. I used the web map application builder to set up the widgets (such as the analysis tools described below).
Results A web map application was created to overlay all of the data onto one map. I decided to use a web map because it could be easily shared online from any desktop or mobile device whereas using an ArcMap document cannot.
Figures and Maps Screenshot below: Web Map Application
Analysis The first analysis I did was to conduct a hot spot analysis of the cash advance locations and all of locations turned out to be not significant. I do not think there were enough data points.
The second analysis I performed was an overlay of the cash advance locations with the 2016 Esri Crime Index Layer. The cash advance locations are in areas above the national average. Intersect results shown as a pop-up:
Conclusions I used layers from the 2016 Esri living atlas such as the unemployment rate, tapestry segmentation, alcoholic beverage spending, median household income, however, these layers displayed data for the entire USA. To refine the look of the web map, I applied a filter to only display California results. Editing the living atlas layers is limited, for example, I could not adjust the visibility range. Also there are different layers for each visibility scale. Another issue is if you make a bar chart, you cannot switch it to a pie chart easily, you have to recreate it. This all requires careful thought before implementation. Here are some interesting facts I concluded from overlaying the data with the living atlas layers: 1) Majority of the cash advance locations are in Sacramento city proper, almost none are located in the suburbs. 2) Majority of cash advance locations contains residents living in the 11,600 - 42,200 median household income range. 3) The more money you have, the more alcohol you purchase (which could also mean that the more expensive the alcohol you purchase is).
References Ace Cash Express website, accessed 20161213 https://www.acecashexpress.com/cash-advance/what-is-a-cash-advance Google Earth, accessed 20161016 www.googlemaps.com
links || Ace Cash Express ||