Lone Actor Terrorists: A Residence-to-Crime Approach

Zoe Marchment, Noémie Bouhana and Paul Gill

Terrorism and Political Violence, 2020, vol. 32, issue 7, 1413-1438

Abstract: Although there has recently been a considerable increase in research into lone actor terrorism, one of the main areas that remains understudied is that of target selection. The lack of empirically driven studies that can guide prevention measures is a notable oversight. This paper applies methods from environmental criminology to examine the residence-to-attack journeys of 122 lone terrorist acts in the U.S and Europe. The distance decay effect was evident, and significant differences were found between subgroups. Individuals were more likely to travel further if a) they were in the U.S, b) they had links to a wider network, c) they had a single-issue ideology, d) they attacked an iconic target, e) they attacked a symbolic building, or f) they used a bomb as their main weapon. A few case studies are discussed which highlight a need to conduct further research that considers the whole nodal network of an individual. The findings suggest that distance can be put forward as a constraining factor on lone actor target selection and provide support for the notion that the spatial decision making of terrorists is similar to traditional criminals.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09546553.2018.1481050 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ftpvxx:v:32:y:2020:i:7:p:1413-1438

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ftpv20

DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2018.1481050

Access Statistics for this article

Terrorism and Political Violence is currently edited by James Forest

More articles in Terrorism and Political Violence from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().