Economics of crime

The Economics of Crime project is a unique collaboration between the department of Urban Studies and Strathclyde police. Using data, provided by the Strathclyde police and data on house prices for the same area held within the department of Urban Studies, the project will examine the relationship between crime and house prices.

Research into the cost of crime has tended to focus on the direct factors, the cost of policing, the cost of damage etc. However, crime is likely to have costs that are less direct and harder to establish. The impact of crime on house prices allows us to estimate the cost that residents place on avoiding crime as well as providing greater understanding and explanation of the variation in house prices over and above the physical attributes of dwellings. This project sets out to use the unique data sets to investigate the relationship between crime and house prices in a number of original ways:

  • The project will use data from a major UK city outside of London;
  • Rather than measures of density or crime rates in an area, the project will use a distance to decay approach;
  • This research will use the same approach to examine the impact on different sub-markets;
  • The project will be able to disaggregate types of crime to an extent which has not been possible in the past;
  • Finally the project will be able to explore how different demographic and social groups respond to different levels of crime.

Researchers

Timescale

June 2009 to August 2010

Funder

Scottish Funding Council, Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research