Protest treatment and its impact on the WTP and WTA estimates for theft and robbery in the UK

José Ignacio Hernández, Alistair Hunt, Matteo Pazzona () and Felipe Vásquez Lavín
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Jose Ignacio Hernández and Felipe Antonio Vásquez Lavín

Oxford Economic Papers, 2018, vol. 70, issue 2, 468-484

Abstract: We undertake a survey that estimates WTP and WTA measures for changes in the risk of being a victim of a robbery or theft in the UK. Respondents are less likely to protest when they are asked to reveal their WTP rather than WTA. Employing various protest-treatment techniques, we estimate the mean WTP for reducing current risks of theft and robbery by 50% to range between £38 and £220; for WTA, they are between £351 and £2,175. Higher values for robbery reflect people’s aversion to the violence implicit in this type of crime. The annual value of avoiding a statistical case of crime ranges between £7,011 for theft and £90,087 for robbery. WTP-WTA ratios range from 1:4.8 to 1:16.9 and are influenced by type of crime and elicitation method. In turn, these results support the economic sense of a pre-emptive crime policy that prevents, rather than compensates for, crime occurrence.

JEL-codes: D69 K49 Q51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oep/gpx050 (application/pdf)
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:oup:oxecpp:v:70:y:2018:i:2:p:468-484.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Economic Papers is currently edited by James Forder and Francis J. Teal

More articles in Oxford Economic Papers from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().