Estimating the effects of crime maps on house prices using an (Un)natural experiment: A study protocol

Zhang, Meng Le, Adepeju, Monsuru ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9006-4934 and Thomas, Rhiannon (2022) Estimating the effects of crime maps on house prices using an (Un)natural experiment: A study protocol. PLoS One, 17 (12). e0278463-e0278463. ISSN 1932-6203

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Official URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.13...

Abstract

Street-level crime maps are publicly available online in England and Wales. However, there was initial resistance to the publication of such fine-grained crime statistics, which can lower house prices and increase insurance premiums in high crime neighbourhoods. Identifying the causal effect of public crime statistics is difficult since crime statistics generally mirror actual crime. To address this question empirically, we would ideally experiment and introduce a source of random variation in the crime statistics. For instance, we could randomly increase or decrease the number of offences displayed in crime statistics and measure their effects on local house prices. For obvious reasons, we cannot pursue this research design. However, street-level crime maps contain intentional errors, which are the product of a geomasking algorithm designed to mask the location of crimes and protect the identity of victims. This project leverages features associated with the geomasking algorithm to estimate the effect of public crime statistics on house prices.

Item Type:	Article
Peer-reviewed:	Yes
Date Deposited:	21 Nov 2022 09:05
Publisher:	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Additional Information:	This is an Open Access article published in PLoS One.
Divisions:	Faculties > Arts and Humanities Research Centres > Research Centre for Applied Social Sciences
Subject terms:	Crime, Behavior Therapy, Algorithms, England, Wales, General Science & Technology
Data Access Statement:	The HM Land Registry Price Paid dataset is a publicly available dataset of properties sold in England and Wales since 1995. The dataset contains information on price sold, address, house type and other features of the property sold. The dataset excludes certain types of transactions, such as inheritance and discounted transactions (e.g. discounted sales of social housing under the ‘Right to Buy’ scheme). The dataset can be accessed at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/price-paid-data. The coordinates of a property are derived from the coordinates of its postcode as recorded in the ONS National Statistics Postcode Lookup (ONS, 2021). (https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/datasets/7606baba633d4bbca3f2510ab78acf61/about). Archival data from police.uk are publicly available from the police.uk data site (https://data.police.uk/data/archive/). Other information, such as police force boundaries, are also contained on the website. We use the earliest archival extract of police.uk which contains data on crimes from Dec 2010 to Dec 2013.
URI:	https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/630825
DOI:	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278463
ISSN	1932-6203

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