Do air quality and green space reduce propensity to crime?: an empirical investigation of OECD countries

Abstract

PurposeThis study investigates the impacts of green space and air quality on crime rates for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries over the 2003–2017 period.Design/methodology/approachBy building an international data set, including both green space and air pollution at the same time in the model, and considering the potential endogeneities between variables, the study brings some novelties to the existing literature. Using the United Nations Crime Trends Survey and World Development Indicators databases, a panel data set of 37 OECD countries for 2003–2017 period was collected. To avoid the potential endogenous relationships between variables, the system-Generalized Method of Moments (system-GMM) method was applied.FindingsThe findings suggest that increases in green space reduce the crime rate, while increases in air pollution raise it. Additionally, the estimated control variables show that there are many statistically significant factors that determine the crime rate. In all the additional models, the effects of green space and air pollution were estimated consistently, which can be taken as a sign that the findings are robust.Originality/valueThe evidence of the study explicitly reveals that environmentally friendly policies provide benefits in terms of reducing crime rates as well as other known benefits. On the other hand, to represent the environmental dimension, this is the first study which uses a cross-country data set including both green space and air pollution in the model at the same time. Second, the issue has not been previously dealt with for OECD countries. Thirdly, the study considered the potential endogeneity between variables, and to check the robustness of the findings, some prominent factors affecting the crime rate were used as control variables.