Why Americans Support Strict Counterterrorism Measures: Examining the Relationship between Concern about Terrorism and Public Support for Counterterrorism

Han Sungil (), Kim Wukki () and Gordon Quinn ()
Additional contact information
Han Sungil: Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, 14727 University of North Carolina , Charlotte, USA
Kim Wukki: Associate Professor, Department of Economics and Law, 65767 Korea Military Academy , Seoul, South Korea
Gordon Quinn: Assistant Professor, Department of Criminal Justice, 5773 University of North Alabama , Florence, AL, USA

Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, 2024, vol. 30, issue 2, 249-270

Abstract: After 9/11, contemporary debates on security often place civil liberties and security at opposite ends of the same spectrum, requiring the loss of one for the maintenance of the other. In addition, public concerns about terrorism determine or at least color public perception about government counterterrorism activities. Thus, the current study empirically examines factors influencing the public’s perception of government activities that may infringe upon individual rights, focusing on the effects of concern about terrorism. For this study we use data collected in World Value Survey (WVS) pertaining to respondents from the U.S. The results of a series of regression analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) indicate that public concern about terrorism is positively associated with support for counterterrorism activities. Moreover, other factors including satisfaction with democracy, community membership and trust in the government are found to play an important role in explaining public support for counterterrorism activities.

Keywords: support for counterterrorism activities; concern about terrorism; trust in government; structural equation model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B0 H56 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/peps-2023-0056 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

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:bpj:pepspp:v:30:y:2024:i:2:p:249-270:n:1002

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/peps/html

DOI: 10.1515/peps-2023-0056

Access Statistics for this article

Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy is currently edited by Raul Caruso

More articles in Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().