Explaining crime in Barcelona: Social disorganization or opportunities due to tourism?

Abstract

This article focuses on the study of the impact of the environment and its characteristics on criminal incidence, a central theme in Spatial Criminology. The Social Disorganization Theory (SDT) and the Routine Activities Theory (RAT), both belonging to Spatial Criminology and in competition, address the question of what spatial factors influence crime but from different perspectives (ecological and environmental, respectively). The research explores the contribution and importance of explanatory variables from both theories, as well as their combination to enhance the explanation of spatial variability in crime. Using Negative Binomial Regression for various criminal typologies and years, utilizing census tracts as the geographical unit, the results emphasize the need to integrate these theories to more effectively model criminal variability among census tracts. Additionally, it is observed that these theories offer distinct explanatory capacity depending on the criminal typology considered.