Do Spatial Spillover Effects of Crime Matter in Urbanization and Crime Nexus? (Case Study: Iranian Provinces)

Khodapanah, Masoud; Dehghan Shabani, Zahra; Shojaeian, Mahboubeh; Akbarzadeh, Mohammad Hadi

doi:10.52547/jep.3.2.243

Do Spatial Spillover Effects of Crime Matter in Urbanization and Crime Nexus? (Case Study: Iranian Provinces)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Associate Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran.

² Associate Professor of Economics, Department of economics, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

³ PhD Candidate in Urban and Regional Economics, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran

⁴ PhD Candidate in Economics, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran

10.52547/jep.3.2.243

Abstract

However, urbanization can have positive effects on the labor force and economic growth in urban areas the unplanned and rapid pace of urbanization process can ultimately lead to unpleasant consequences including marginalization, unemployment, poverty, the emergence of slums and shanty towns and the prevalence of crime in urban areas. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate the spatial spillover effects of urbanization on crime in 30 Iranian provinces during the period from 2006 to 2015 using dynamic spatial panel data models. The results of the study revealed that urbanization had a positive and statistically significant impacts on crime per capita in Iranian provinces indicating an increase in urbanization enhances the crime level. In addition, unemployment rate, and human capital had significant and negative effects on crime in Iranian provinces, respectively. Finally, the crime per capita in a previous period exerted a significant positive effect on the current crime which stablished the dynamic nature of this phenomenon. Moreover, the results of the study demonstrated that increasing crime per capita in neighboring provinces could elevate the crime in a given province.

Keywords

20.1001.1.27171485.2022.3.2.10.9

References

Agyei-Mensah, S., Owusu, G., & Wrigley-Asante, C. (2015). Urban health in Africa: looking beyond the MDGs. International Development Planning Review, 37(1): 53-60.

Aksoy, E. (2017). Geography of crime and its relation to location: the city of Balıkesir (Turkey). In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 245, No. 7, p. 072012). IOP Publishing.

Andresen, M. A., Ha, K., & Davies, G. (2021). Spatially Varying Unemployment and Crime Effects in the Long Run and Short Run. The Professional Geographer, 73(2): 297-311.‏

Ansari Samani, H., Rouzbahani, M. (2020). Economic Justice and Social Crimes; Some Evidence from Iran's Provinces. Journal of Economics and Regional Development, 26(18), 1-18. (in Persian).

Anselin, L. (1995). Local indicators of spatial association—LISA. Geographical analysis, 27(2): 93-115.

Anselin, L. (2009). Spatial regression. The SAGE handbook of spatial analysis, 1, 255-276.

Anselin, L., Cohen, J., Cook, D., Gorr, W., & Tita, G. (2000). Spatial analyses of crime. Criminal justice, 4(2): 213-262.

Anselin, L., Cohen, J., Cook, D., Gorr, W., & Tita, G. (2009). Spatial analyses of crime. Criminal justice, 4(2): 213-262.

Baller, R. D., Anselin, L., Messner, S., Deane, G., & Hawkins, D. (2001). Structural covariates of US county homicide rates: Incorporating spatial effects. Criminology, 39(3): 561-588.

Becker, G. S. (1968). Crime and punishment: An economic approach. In The economic dimensions of crime (pp. 13-68). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Bennett, P. (2018). The heterogeneous effects of education on crime: Evidence from Danish administrative twin data. Labour Economics, 52: 160-177.

Bharadwaj, A. (2014). Is poverty the mother of crime? Empirical evidence of the impact of socioeconomic factors on crime in India. Atlantic Review of Economics, 1.

Blackmore, F. L. E. (2003). A panel data analysis of crime in South Africa. South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences, 6(3): 439-458.

Bottoms, A. E., Claytor, A., & Wiles, P. (2002). Housing Markets and Residential Community Crime Careers. Crime, Policing and Place: Essays in Environmental Criminology, 118.

Braithwaite, J. (1975). Population growth and crime. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 8(1): 57-60.

Brantingham, P. J., Brantingham, P. L., Song, J., & Spicer, V. (2020). Crime hot spots, crime corridors and the journey to crime: An expanded theoretical model of the generation of crime concentrations. In Geographies of behavioural health, crime, and disorder (pp. 61-86). Springer, Cham.

Brantingham, P. L., & Brantingham, P. J. (1999). A theoretical model of crime hot spot generation. Studies on Crime & Crime Prevention.

Bruinsma, G. J. (2007). Urbanization and urban crime: Dutch geographical and environmental research. Crime and Justice, 35(1): 453-502.

Buonanno, P., & Montolio, D. (2008). Identifying the socio-economic and demographic determinants of crime across Spanish provinces. International Review of law and Economics, 28(2): 89-97.‏

Burgess, E. W. (1967 [1925]), ‘The Growth of the City: An Introduction to a Research Project’, in R. E. Park and E. W. Burgess, eds, The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behaviour in the Urban Environment, 47–62. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Clinard, M. B. (1942). The process of urbanization and criminal behavior. American Journal of Sociology, 48(2): 202-213.

Coccia, M. (2018). Violent crime driven by income Inequality between countries. Turkish Economic Review, 5(1): 33-55.

Dede, M., Setiawan, I., & Mulyadi, A. (2017, October). Application GIS to Analyse Crime Risk in Bandung. In An Article in the 2nd UPI International Conference of Sociology Education (Vol. 4).

Dong, B., & Torgler, B. (2012). Corruption and social interaction: Evidence from China. Journal of Policy Modeling, 34(6): 932-947.

Dutkowska, N., & Leitner, M. (2017). Land use influencing the spatial distribution of urban crime: A case study of Szczecin, Poland. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 6(3), 74.

Durkheim, E. (1964). The division of labor (p. 85). New York: The.

Dutta, M., & Husain, Z. (2009). Determinants of crime rates: Crime Deterrence and Growth in post-liberalized India.

Ehrlich, I. (1973). Participation in illegitimate activities: A theoretical and empirical investigation. Journal of political Economy, 81(3): 521-565.

Ehrlich, I. (1975). On the relation between education and crime. In Education, income, and human behavior (pp. 313-338). NBER.

Eisner, M. (2003). Long-term historical trends in violent crime. Crime and Justice, 30: 83-142.

Elhorst, J. P. (2012). Dynamic spatial panels: models, methods, and inferences. Journal of geographical systems, 14(1), 5-28.

Elhorst, J. P. (2014). Spatial econometrics: from cross-sectional data to spatial panels (Vol. 479, p. 480). Heidelberg: Springer.

Elis, R. J., & Liu, Y. (2018). Human Rights in the Context of Criminal Justice: A Study of Urban Crime. Open Journal of Political Science, 8(03): 305.

Erdoğan, S., Dereli, M. A., & Yalçin, M. (2011). Spatial analysis of five crime statistics in Turkey.

Esiri, M. O. (2016). The influence of peer pressure on criminal behaviour. Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 21(1): 08-14.

Farahmand, Sh., Saffari, B., & Mousavi, V. (2016). Spatial analysis of the impact of socio-economic factors on crimes in provinces of Iran emphasizing on immigration (2006-2011). The Economic Research, 1: 138-117. (In persian)

Fotros M. H., Dalaei Milan A., Ghorbanseresht M. (2012). Effects of Poverty, Unemployment, and Urbanization on Committing Property Crimes in Iran. Social welfare Quarterly; 12 (46): :279-317 (in Persian).

Gaviria, A., & Pagés, C. (2002). Patterns of crime victimization in Latin American cities. Journal of Development Economics, 67(1): 181-203.

Ghani, Z. A. (2017). A comparative study of urban crime between Malaysia and Nigeria. Journal of Urban Management, 6(1): 19-29.

Glaeser, E. L., & Sacerdote, B. (1999). Why is there more crime in cities?. Journal of political economy, 107(S6): 225-258.

Goschin, Z. (2019). Local Factors Explaining the Incidence of Criminal Offences in Romania. A Geographically Weighted Regression Model. Romanian Statistical Review, (2).‏

Gumus, E. (2004). Crime in urban areas: An empirical investigation. Akdeniz IIBF Dergisi, 4(7): 98-109.

Hadri, K., & Rao, Y. (2008). Panel stationarity test with structural breaks. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and statistics, 70(2): 245-269.

Hagan, J. (1993). The social embeddedness of crime and unemployment. Criminology, 31(4): 465-491.

Halicioglu, F., Andrés, A. R., & Yamamura, E. (2012). Modeling crime in Japan. Economic Modelling, 29(5): 1640-1645.

Han, L., Bandyopadhyay, S., & Bhattacharya, S. (2013). Determinants of violent and property crimes in England and Wales: A panel data analysis. Applied Economics, 45(34): 4820-4830.

Hirschfield, A., & Bowers, K. J. (1997). The effect of social cohesion on levels of recorded crime in disadvantaged areas. Urban Studies, 34(8): 1275-1295.

Hazra, D., & Cui, Z. (2018). Macroeconomic determinants of crime: Evidence from India. Journal of Quantitative Economics, 16(1): 187-198.‏

Hjalmarsson, R., & Lochner, L. (2012). The impact of education on crime: international evidence. CESIFO DICE Report, 10(2): 49-55.

Hoyos, R. E., & Sarafidis, V. (2006). Testing for cross-sectional dependence in panel-data models. The stata journal, 6(4): 482-496.

Hooghe, M., Vanhoutte, B., Hardyns, W., & Bircan, T. (2011). Unemployment, inequality, poverty and crime: spatial distribution patterns of criminal acts in belgium, 2001–06. The British Journal of Criminology, 51(1): 1-20.

Jalil, H. H., & Iqbal, M. M. (2010). Urbanisation and crime: A case study of Pakistan. The Pakistan Development Review, 741-755.

Johnson, E. A. (1992). Cities don't cause crime: urban-rural differences in late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century German criminality. Social Science History, 16(1): 129-176.

Kukenova, M., & Monteiro, J. A. (2009). Spatial dynamic panel model and system GMM: A Monte Carlo investigation (No. 13405). University Library of Munich, Germany.‏

Lauridsen, J. T., Zeren, F., & Ari, A. (2013). A spatial panel data analysis of crime rates in EU. Discussion Papers on Business and Economics. Department of Business and Economics, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.

Lochner, Lance (2007) Individual Perceptions of the Criminal Justice System. American Economic Review, 97: 444–460.

Malik, A. A. (2016). Urbanization and crime: a relational analysis. IOSR Journal of Humanities And Social Science, 21 (1): 68-74.

Nguyen, H. T. (2019). Do more educated neighbourhoods experience less property crime? Evidence from Indonesia. International Journal of Educational Development, 64: 27-37.

Okafor, E. E. (2011). Youth unemployment and implications for stability of democracy in Nigeria. Journal of sustainable Development in Africa, 13 (1): 358-373.

Oyelade, A. O. (2019). Determinants of crime in Nigeria from economic and socioeconomic perspectives: a macro-level analysis. International Journal of Health Economics and Policy, 4(1): 20-28.‏

Pavlo, I. (2011). Distribution of Crime across Ukraine: Panel and Spatial Analysis. Diss. School of Economics.‏

Rogers, J. D. (1989). Theories of crime and development: An historical perspective. The Journal of Development Studies, 25(3): 314-328.

Salima, B. A., & Bellefon, M. D. (2018). Spatial autocorrelation indices. Handbook of Spatial Analysis: Theory Aplication with R, 51-68.

Soh, M. B. C. (2012). Crime and urbanization: Revisited Malaysian case. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 42: 291-299.

Spierenburg, P. (1996). Long-term trends in homicide: Theoretical reflections and Dutch evidence, fifteenth to twentieth centuries. The civilization of crime: Violence in town and country since the Middle Ages, 63-105.

Vega, S. H., & Elhorst, J. P. (2013). On spatial econometric models, spillover effects, and W. In 53rd ERSA Congress, Palermo, Italy.

Wong, Y. C. R. (1995). An economic analysis of the crime rate in England and Wales, 1857-92. Economica, 62(246): 235-246.

Zhou, C., & Wang, S. (2018). Examining the determinants and the spatial nexus of city-level CO2 emissions in China: a dynamic spatial panel analysis of China's cities. Journal of cleaner production, 171: 917-926.

Zhao, J., Wang, Y., & Shi, W. (2017). Using local Moran’s I statistics to estimate spatial autocorrelation of urban economic growth in Shandong province, China. In International Conference on Geo-Spatial Knowledge and Intelligence (pp. 32-39). Springer, Singapore.