On the Conditional Relevance of Controls: An Application of Situational Action Theory to Shoplifting

ABSTRACT

Classic self-control theory and the pure deterrence argument have both been recently challenged by integrative theory and appropriate empirical evidence suggesting that controls are only conditionally relevant to action. Situational Action Theory (SAT) provides a fertile framework within which to study the effectiveness of controls. Specifically, SAT’s principle of the conditional relevance of controls states that controls only influence behavior when a person is forced to deliberate over action alternatives because of conflict between his/her own moral rules and those of the setting. That the moral filter does not preclude crime from the action alternatives perceived by an individual can be due to weak personal moral norms or exposure to a crime-conducive moral context. In particular, SAT states that (1) deterrence (external control) only becomes relevant to deliberations when personal morality is weak and (2) the process of self-control (internal control) only becomes relevant to deliberations when an individual is exposed to criminogenic moral contexts. Both these hypotheses are tested with a large-scale Austrian student survey dedicated to the explanation of adolescent shoplifting. The results provide firm support for these key propositions of SAT.

Notes

¹ Only studies that take account of the conditional relevance of controls and their situational nature will be included in the literature reviewed in this article.

² For example, in Germany 50% of all incidents of shoplifting reported to the police in 2011 involved stolen goods valued at below €15 (Bundeskriminalamt 2012).

³ In some cases it may also be possible for shoplifting to develop into a habitual behavior that requires little or no deliberation. Then controls, according to the PCRC, are irrelevant.

⁴ According to SAT, crimes are a breach of legal rules that are a subset of moral rules.

⁵ Many other aspects of SAT are not addressed in this article, such as how people develop individual crime propensity, how settings acquire criminogenic features, and how individuals are differentially exposed to different contexts. Many well-established predictors of crime (such as socioeconomic disadvantage, poor parenting practice, poor neighborhood collective efficacy, and neurological impairments) are indirectly implicated in SAT’s causal model via their influence on the development of an individual’s crime propensity and/or the emergence of a setting’s criminogenic features (and the exposure of those people to those settings). SAT states that the roles of such systemic factors are as “causes of the causes.”

⁶ This is why habitual action is not further explored in this study, which is concerned with the role of controls in dealing with conflicting rule guidance. In reality, decision-making processes involve elements of both deliberation and habit and there is probably an element of deliberation even in predominantly habitual behavior.

⁷ It is well known that, due to false consensus and projection effects, respondents’ perceptions of their friends’ attitudes and behaviors are systematically biased in the direction of their own attitudes and behaviors, which leads to an inflation of the association between peer and personal delinquency (Rebellon and Modecki 2013). That indirect peer delinquency measures are contaminated by various biases, does, however, not discredit using perceived peer crime involvement as a measure of the moral context. According to SAT it is exactly the subjectively perceived and not the objective moral context that guides individual behavior (Wikström 2006).

⁸ It is simplistic, however, to state that the perceived severity of a punishment is not relevant to whether a person is concerned or fearful about consequences. If punishment is extremely mild, the certainty of that punishment is quite possibly rendered irrelevant.

⁹ Although not directly testing the interaction of specifically morality and deterrence, the authors found that actors who more often perceived crime as an action alternative were more deterred from acts of crime by fear of consequences driven by their deterrence perceptions. They concluded that “the reason most people, most of the time, refrain from crime is not because they fear the consequences but because they do not see crime … as an ‘action alternative’” (Wikström et al. 2011:2).

¹⁰ With interaction hypotheses, which concept is the moderating and which the focal one can only be determined on theoretical, but not empirical, grounds.

¹¹ To achieve this net sample of 92 schools, 115 schools were contacted (80% participation rate).

¹² The results reported in this article remain stable when the unweighted data set is used.

¹³ Required response was a number of times, producing a continuous variable.

¹⁴ With sampling being based on grades 7 to 9, the Austrian ISRD-2 study draws on a nearly equivalent age group.

¹⁵ “How wrong is it to steal a music CD from a shop?” (“very wrong” (1), “wrong” (2), “a little wrong” (3), “not wrong at all” (4)).

¹⁶ “Would you feel guilty if you stole something from a shop?” (“yes, very much” (1), “yes, a little” (2), “no, not at all” (3)).

¹⁷ “If you were caught shoplifting and your parents found out about it, would you feel ashamed?” (“yes, very much” (1), “yes, a little” (2), “no, not at all” (3)).

¹⁸ Wikström’s self-control scale is itself an abridged and slightly modified version of the inventory developed by Grasmick and colleagues (1993).

¹⁹ “I often act on the spur of the moment without stopping to think”; “I often try to avoid things that I know will be difficult”; “I lose my temper pretty easily”; “When I am really angry, other people better stay away from me”; “I often take a risk just for the fun of it”; “Sometimes I find it exciting to do things that are dangerous.”

²⁰ “Strongly agree” (4), “mostly agree” (3), “mostly disagree” (2), “strongly disagree” (1).

²¹ “Most of my friends think it is okay to take something away from a shop without paying for it” (“Strongly agree” (4), “mostly agree” (3), “mostly disagree” (2), “strongly disagree”(1)).

²² “How many of your friends stole something from a shop in the last 12 months?” (“none” (1), “a few” (2), “most of them” (3), “all” (4)).

²³ “No risk at all” (4), “a small risk” (3), “a great risk” (2), “a very great risk” (1).

²⁴ Perceived sanctioning severity only very weakly correlates with shoplifting frequency (r = –.07; p = .000).

²⁵ Nonlinear models confound two types of interaction: a model-inherent coefficient variation resulting from the specific form of the employed link function (i.e., from the multiplicative nature of the model) and the interaction that is captured by a product term. Both types of interaction can cancel each other out, which implies that a significant product term is neither necessary nor sufficient for claiming interaction (Berry et al. 2010; Bowen 2012).

²⁶ For the interaction diagrams, the predictor variables were dichotomized at the median.

²⁷ 0 = participant reported no shoplifting; 1 = at least one act of shoplifting is reported.

²⁸ Model 4 in Table 3 demonstrates that both interaction effects retain their significance when simultaneously introduced in a linear regression model.

²⁹ The question of which concept is moderating and which focal can only be decided on theoretical, but not on empirical, grounds in the study of interactive relationships.

³⁰ Wikstrom et al. (2012) showed that the ability to exercise self-control is relatively stable throughout adolescence. While moral beliefs become weaker during this time period, such change is driven by a relaxation in attitudes toward minor moral infractions and substance use, whereas moral attitudes to crimes such as shoplifting remain relatively stable.

³¹ Of the young shoplifters included in the present sample, 72% report having committed their last act of shoplifting in the presence of friends.

³² With each additional predictor variable, the power to verify the existence of interaction erodes further.

Additional information

Funding

The research underlying this article was funded under grant no. SPA03–56 by the Sparkling Science Research Program of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research.

Notes on contributors

Helmut Hirtenlehner

HELMUT HIRTENLEHNER is Associate Professor of Criminology and head of the Centre for Criminology at the University of Linz (Austria). His current research interests include Situational Action Theory, deterrence, Institutional-Anomie Theory, and fear of crime. Recent publications were “Is the ‘shadow of sexual assault’ responsible for women’s higher fear of burglary?” (with Stephen Farrall) in the British Journal of Criminology (2014) and “Culture, Institutions, and Morally Dubious Behaviors: Testing Some Core Propositions of the Institutional-Anomie Theory” (with Stephen Farrall and Johann Bacher) in Deviant Behavior (2013).

Beth Hardie

BETH HARDIE is a Research Associate at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge. She is the Research Manager of the Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+), and therefore her interests include testing and developing Situational Action Theory, and developing and analysing data from innovative research methods such as the Space-Time Budget. Publications include the monograph “Breaking Rules: the social and situational dynamics of young people’s urban crime” (with Per-Olof Wikström, Dietrich Oberwittler and Kyle Treiber, published by Oxford University Press), and “Activity fields and the dynamics of crime: advancing knowledge about the role of the environment in crime causation” (with Per-Olof Wikström, Vania Ceccato and Kyle Treiber, published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology).