Résumé

This study aims to model the effect of hospitality employment on property crime in conventional economic crime equations, in which unemployment indicates the opportunity cost of crime. We argue that the labor-intensive tourism and hospitality industry can not only increase the opportunity cost of property crime but also morph potential criminal offenders into hospitality labor force due to the overlapping profiles of the two. We tested the model with the panel data of hospitality employment and property crime rates in the United States from 1960 to 2012. Having controlled various covariates in the model and instrumented for both hospitality employment and unemployment rate, we found a significantly negative causation from hospitality employment to property crime. We conclude that the decrease of property crime is owing not only to fewer targets because of increased unemployment rate but also to hospitality employment that increases its opportunity cost.

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