IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jcjust/v39y2011i4p312-319.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The effect of perceived risk and victimization on plans to purchase a gun for self-protection

Author

Listed:
  • Kleck, Gary
  • Kovandzic, Tomislav
  • Saber, Mark
  • Hauser, Will

Abstract

Purposes To determine if perceived risk of criminal victimization, and past criminal victimization experiences, increases the likelihood of a person owning a gun for self-protection, and to determine if defects in past research concerning the way gun ownership was measured had obscured such effects.Methods We analyzed data on over 2,500 U.S. adults, using different ways of measuring gun ownership, and also analyzed future plans (among persons who did not own a gun at the time of the survey) to acquire a gun for self-protection. The latter procedure avoids the causal order problem attributable to the possibility that acquiring a gun might affect victimization risks and perceived risks, as well as the reverse.Results The estimated effect of perceived risk and prior victimization changed from being nonsignificant when household gun ownership was the dependent variable (as in most prior research) to being increasingly strong, and statistically significant, when gun ownership of the individual respondent for defensive reasons was measured. Further, once the causal order issue was side-stepped, risk and victimization showed even stronger, significant positive effects on planning to get a gun.Conclusions Crime affects gun ownership, in addition to any effects that gun ownership may have on crime.

Suggested Citation

  • Kleck, Gary & Kovandzic, Tomislav & Saber, Mark & Hauser, Will, 2011. "The effect of perceived risk and victimization on plans to purchase a gun for self-protection," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 312-319, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jcjust:v:39:y:2011:i:4:p:312-319
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047235211000377
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert M. Jiobu & Timothy J. Curry, 2001. "Lack of Confidence in the Federal Government and the Ownership of Firearms," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 82(1), pages 77-88, March.
    2. DeJong, Christina, 1997. "Differential indicators of defensive weapon ownership: a comparison by genderPublications received," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 25(6), pages 517-526, November.
    3. Moulton, Brent R, 1990. "An Illustration of a Pitfall in Estimating the Effects of Aggregate Variables on Micro Unit," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(2), pages 334-338, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kleck, Gary, 2015. "The Impact of Gun Ownership Rates on Crime Rates: A Methodological Review of the Evidence," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 40-48.
    2. Cross, Benjamin W. & Pruitt, Stephen W., 2013. "Dark Knights Rising: The Aurora Theater and Newtown School Massacres and Shareholder Wealth," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 41(6), pages 452-457.
    3. Cafferata, Fernando G. & Domínguez, Patricio & Scartascini, Carlos, 2023. "Overconfidence and Gun Preferences: How Behavioral Biases Affect Your Safety," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 12816, Inter-American Development Bank.
    4. J C Barnes & Kevin M Beaver & Brian B Boutwell, 2013. "A Functional Polymorphism in a Serotonin Transporter Gene (5-HTTLPR) Interacts with 9/11 to Predict Gun-Carrying Behavior," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(8), pages 1-5, August.
    5. Joseph M. Pierre, 2019. "The psychology of guns: risk, fear, and motivated reasoning," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-7, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Maria De Paola & Vincenzo Scoppa, 2010. "Peer group effects on the academic performance of Italian students," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(17), pages 2203-2215.
    2. Salimata Sissoko, 2011. "Working Paper 03-11 - Niveau de décentralisation de la négociation et structure des salaires," Working Papers 1103, Federal Planning Bureau, Belgium.
    3. Stephen Drinkwater, 2003. "Go West? Assessing the willingness to move from Central and Eastern European Countries," School of Economics Discussion Papers 0503, School of Economics, University of Surrey.
    4. Manthos D. Delis & Sotirios Kokas & Steven Ongena, 2016. "Foreign Ownership and Market Power in Banking: Evidence from a World Sample," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(2-3), pages 449-483, March.
    5. Giuseppe Croce & Emanuela Ghignoni, 2011. "Overeducation and spatial flexibility in Italian local labour markets," Working Papers in Public Economics 145, University of Rome La Sapienza, Department of Economics and Law.
    6. Thomas Crossley & Mario Jametti, 2013. "Pension Benefit Insurance and Pension Plan Portfolio Choice," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(1), pages 337-341, March.
    7. David G. Blanchflower & Andrew Oswald, 1995. "International Wage Curves," NBER Chapters, in: Differences and Changes in Wage Structures, pages 145-174, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Philippe Martin & Thierry Mayer & Florian Mayneris, 2008. "Spatial Concentration and Firm-Level Productivity in France," Sciences Po publications 6858, Sciences Po.
    9. Sylvain Chassang & Erik Snowberg & Ben Seymour & Cayley Bowles, 2015. "Accounting for Behavior in Treatment Effects: New Applications for Blind Trials," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(6), pages 1-13, June.
    10. Valentine Fays & Benoît Mahy & François Rycx, 2023. "Wage differences according to workers' origin: The role of working more upstream in GVCs," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 37(2), pages 319-342, June.
    11. Nucci, Francesco & Pozzolo, Alberto Franco, 2010. "The exchange rate, employment and hours: What firm-level data say," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 112-123, November.
    12. David Campbell, 2001. "Rates of Return to Schooling and the Quality of Education in England and Wales," Studies in Economics 0115, School of Economics, University of Kent.
    13. Ose, Solveig Osborg, 2005. "Working conditions, compensation and absenteeism," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 161-188, January.
    14. Gijs Roelofs & Daniel Vuuren, 2017. "The Decentralization of Social Assistance and the Rise of Disability Insurance Enrolment," De Economist, Springer, vol. 165(1), pages 1-21, March.
    15. Knack, Steve & Xu, Lixin Colin, 2017. "Unbundling institutions for external finance: Worldwide firm-level evidence," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 215-232.
    16. Nattavudh Powdthavee, 2005. "Unhappiness and Crime: Evidence from South Africa," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 72(287), pages 531-547, August.
    17. Jacob Veenstra & Bernard Ommeren, 2017. "Bailout Clauses and the Price of Credit: The Dutch Experience for Housing Corporations," De Economist, Springer, vol. 165(3), pages 295-320, September.
    18. Thomas, Duncan & Strauss, John, 1997. "Health and wages: Evidence on men and women in urban Brazil," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 159-185, March.
    19. Philip Du Caju & François Rycx & Ilan Tojerow, 2011. "Inter‐Industry Wage Differentials: How Much Does Rent Sharing Matter?," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 79(4), pages 691-717, July.
    20. Tarun Khanna & Krishna Palepu, 1999. "Policy Shocks, Market Intermediaries, and Corporate Strategy: The Evolution of Business Groups in Chile and India," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(2), pages 271-310, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jcjust:v:39:y:2011:i:4:p:312-319. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jcrimjus .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.