Subjective Probabilities of Sanction, Norms, Legitimacy and Everyday Life Crimes in Europe

Crimes of everyday life are usually defined as unfair and unethical practices committed in the marketplace by people who see themselves, and who are seen by others as respectable citizens. This paper studies the main drivers of this specific criminal behavior based on a cross-nation econometric analysis of data from the 2010 European Social Survey. In particular, it focuses on the subjective probability of sanction, norm internalization and the perceived legitimacy of the judicial system. Three, everyday crimes are examined in detail: false insurance claims, the purchase of potentially stolen goods, and traffic offenses. After controlling for sociodemographic variables, social capital and country fixed effects, we find that norm internalization is negatively associated with everyday crime, while the perceived legitimacy of judicial institutions is non-significant, and the results are ambiguous for the subjective probability of sanctions. Finally our work highlights the difficulty of using survey data in crime analysis. Codes JEL: D8, K14, K42