Perceptions Follow Experience: Assessment of Local Crime Risk

Abstract

We provide evidence that victimization of crime is a major determinant of the evolution of perceptions of the prevalence of crime in the neighborhood. This holds even though these personal experiences have a negligible impact on the crime rate that is being judged. Our analysis is based on four successive waves of a large crime survey matched with household-level data for the complete history of moves between 1995 and 2011 for the population of the Netherlands. We follow risk perceptions of cohorts of neighborhood residents during the ten years since they moved into the neighborhood. Even though they are all asked to judge the same crime rate, we find that new residents have much more favorable perceptions of the neighborhood crime risk than old-time residents – independent from the crime risk in the previous neighborhood of residence, the specific motive to move, differences in the capability of dealing with risk, gender, and from being in the position to learn from previous moves. It takes many years for this gap to close. We provide additional individual-level evidence that this convergence in perceptions results from the accumulation of victimization experiences in the years after a move.

Keywords: heuristic, victimization, crime

JEL Classification: D81, K42