How bad is crime for business? Evidence from consumer behavior

Hao Fe and Viviane Sanfelice

Journal of Urban Economics, 2022, vol. 129, issue C

Abstract: Understanding how consumers respond to crime offers evidence of how safety perception impacts individuals daily choices and has important implications for economic development of communities. This paper investigates the impact of local crime on subsequent consumer visits to food and entertainment retails using a novel longitudinal dataset with point-specific crime and consumer visit data. We leverage the richness of our data to account for unobserved heterogeneity and time variant confounders through temporal and geographical variation. Our results show that consumers respond more strongly to property and street crimes. The response concentrates on the venue visit decision rather than the intensity of consumption (i.e. duration) in the venue.

Keywords: Foot-traffic; Neighborhood; Safegraph; Venue; Violence; Visit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K40 M21 R11 R12 R38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:juecon:v:129:y:2022:i:c:s0094119022000250

DOI: 10.1016/j.jue.2022.103448

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