Housing price and criminal crime in China: direct and indirect influence

ABSTRACT

The aim of the present work is to focus on the increased number of criminal crimes from the perspective of the rising housing price in China. Based on the theory of crime economics, the article analyzed the direct and indirect influence channel through which the housing prices may have impacts on criminal crimes. The paper collected the panel data of 27 province-level regions in China from 2004 to 2017 and verified the hypotheses by using fixed effect model, mediating effect model and spatial Dubin model. Our study offered the following conclusions: 1. The rise in housing price is a generative impetus for the frequent occurrence of the criminal offenses. 2. Consumption gap serves as the mediating variable between housing price and criminal crime. 3. There is a spatial correlation between housing price and criminal crime in China. Finally, the paper proposed relevant suggestions based on the above conclusions.

KEYWORDS:

• Criminal crime
• housing price
• consumption gap
• China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 According to the Chinese Criminal Procedural law, an arrest order is a compulsory measure for criminal investigations.It can only be issued by a police chief ranked above devisional level and must only be issued for serious offence or urgent offence or situations prescribed by law.It is the only one among five police investigative measures that requires prior approval by local procuratorate authority.

2 In this paper, the regression process of the mediation model is omitted and only report the spatial effects.