An alternative to Moran's I for spatial autocorrelation

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.