Spatial Nonlinear Forces and Consumer Behavior on Community Pharmacies: A Study after the Guangzhou COVID-19 Lift Lockdown

Spatial and structural inequalities in health space are a global concern. An understanding of the spatial characteristics and activities of citizens in urban communities is crucial in addressing this issue. As the main health space, community pharmacies play a vital role in responding to disease outbreaks. Their spatial distribution and functions need to adapt to the new consumer context. This study focuses on community pharmacies in the main urban zone of Guangzhou after the lift lockdown of COVID-19 in late 2022. We used an official list of community pharmacies and online open-source data to integrate consumer behaviors and pharmacy perception questionnaire data. We also utilized random forest classification and SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) values to understand the spatial distribution patterns and nonlinear relationships of pharmacies influencing factors. The results indicate that residents in the main city zone exhibit different behaviors in the old and the new urban districts. Community pharmacies are more clustered in the old urban districts than in the new ones. Factors such as population and road accessibility strongly influence the distribution of pharmacies. These findings are expected to provide insights for the spatial planning of health space research. They can also significantly contribute to the advancement of science-based planning and urban management practices.