engleski

Estimating the direct tourism - induced crime: evidence from Croatia

For all its benefits, mainly through contributing to economic growth, tourism can cause certain negative externalities, increased crime incidence being one of them. This can cost tourist destinations immedialtely, but also imperil its image and fend off tourists in the future. We study the impact of tourism on crime in Croatia by estimating the elasticity of property crime with respect to tourist arrivals on monthly panel data at the county level over the period 1998−2016. We find robust evidence that tourism increases property crime. The elasticity varies spatially and by type of property crime, being higher in coastal than in continental counties, and higher for theft than for larceny. The estimates are used for counterfactual calculations which show that if tourism were the only factor affecting property crime, the number of crimes would have evolved over 2006−2016 to a much higher level than it actually has. The elasticities are large enough that, absent sufficietly strong countervailing factors, even a moderately paced tourism growth can bring a sizeable increase in property crime over a decade.

tourism ; crime

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