Conference on Applied Statistics in Agriculture

On fixed effects estimation in spline-based semiparametric regression for spatial data

Spline surfaces are often used to capture spatial variability sources in linear mixed-effects models, without imposing a parametric covariance structure on the random effects. However, including a spline component in a semiparametric model may change the estimated regression coefficients, a problem analogous to spatial confounding in spatially correlated random effects. Our research aims to investigate such effects in spline-based semiparametric regression for spatial data. We discuss estimators' behavior under the traditional spatial linear regression, how the estimates change in spatial confounding-like situations, and how selecting a proper tuning parameter for the spline can help reduce bias.