Individual Perceptions of Local Crime Risk
47 Pages Posted: 6 Dec 2014 Last revised: 25 Sep 2024
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Perceptions Follow Experience: Assessment of Local Crime Risk
Abstract
We provide evidence that perceptions of crime risk are severely biased for many years after a move to a new neighborhood. Based on four successive waves of a large crime survey, matched with administrative records on household relocations, we find that the longer an individual lives in a neighborhood, the higher their perception of the crime rate in the neighborhood. This finding holds irrespective of whether the move is from a relatively low-crime to a relatively high-crime area or vice versa. We find that avoidance behavior adjusts in line with the observed changes in beliefs.
Keywords: heuristic, victimization, crime
JEL Classification: D81, K42, K14
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation