Abstract
Using a panel data set of European countries, this paper investigates the impact of crime on international tourism. Violent crimes are negatively associated with incoming international tourists and international tourism revenue indicating that international tourists consider the risk of victimization when choosing a location to visit. This impact is smaller in magnitude in Southern European countries with a coastline which are generally more attractive tourist destinations in terms of sea tourism, suggesting that victimization risk and attractiveness of the destination may be substitutable traits.
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Notes
Regarding the impact of word-of-mouth information on behavior, see Rincke and Traxler (2009).
This holds true even for the violent crimes. Some violent crimes, such as robberies, involve monetary returns. In addition, violent crimes may occur due to a property crime. For example, a pocket lifter may use their weapon to force the victim to surrender, if the victim notices their wallet/purse is being stolen.
These authors do not find a relationship between tourism activity and violent crime. This may be because, when tourists (who are presumably wealthy) visit a country, the expected return to criminal activities such as theft and burglary goes up, since incoming tourists may increase the number of targets from whom valuable assets can be stolen by the potential criminals. However, there are no direct incentives for committing a violent crime, such as murder or rape. Therefore, the link from tourism to violent crime is expected to be much weaker.
Specifically, these authors use one period lagged arrest rates to explain the variation in crime.
Russia is an exception. This is because, the majority of Russian territory is located in the Northern Europe where the climate does not permit sea tourism.
Russia is an exception. I excluded Russia from the Sea Tourism Available sample, because the majority of Russian territory is located in Northern Europe where the weather conditions are not suitable for sea tourism.
Although the coefficient of the homicide rate in the No Sea Tourism Opportunity sample is much larger than it is in the Sea Tourism Available sample, the mean of tourism revenue in the No Sea Tourism sample is larger as well. In addition, the mean of the homicide rate in the No Sea Tourism sample is smaller. As a result, the elasticity estimates are comparable.
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Altindag, D.T. Crime and International Tourism. J Labor Res 35, 1–14 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-014-9174-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-014-9174-8