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Fear of crime and housing prices: Household reactions to sex offender registries

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Author Info

  • Pope, Jaren C.

Abstract

Megan's Law requires public dissemination of information from sex offender registries. Opponents to this controversial law have questioned whether households misinterpret or even use this information. One concern was that the information might simply induce a "fear of crime." This study finds evidence for both use and misinterpretation of the publicly available information on sex offenders. Using a unique dataset that tracks sex offenders in Hillsborough County, Florida, the results indicate that after a sex offender moves into a neighborhood, nearby housing prices fall by 2.3% ($3500 on average). However, once a sex offender moves out of a neighborhood, housing prices appear to immediately rebound. Surprisingly, these price impacts do not appear to differ in areas near high risk offenders labeled as "predators."

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Bibliographic Info

Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Journal of Urban Economics.

Volume (Year): 64 (2008)
Issue (Month): 3 (November)
Pages: 601-614

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Handle: RePEc:eee:juecon:v:64:y:2008:i:3:p:601-614

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Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622905

Related research

Keywords: Information disclosure Crime Hedonic Property values Megan's Law;

References

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  1. Sandra E. Black, 1997. "Do better schools matter? Parental valuation of elementary education," Research Paper 9729, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
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  8. Kenneth Y. Chay & Michael Greenstone, 1998. "Does Air Quality Matter? Evidence from the Housing Market," NBER Working Papers 6826, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Edward L. Glaeser & Stuart S. Rosenthal & William C. Strange, 2009. "Urban Economics and Entrepreneurship," NBER Working Papers 15536, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Martin, Philippe & Mayer, Thierry & Mayneris, Florian, 2011. "Spatial concentration and plant-level productivity in France," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 182-195, March.
  3. Freedman, Matthew & Owens, Emily G., 2011. "Low-income housing development and crime," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2-3), pages 115-131, September.
  4. Stuart S. Rosenthal & Amanda Ross, 2010. "Violent Crime, Entrepreneurship, and Cities," NBER Chapters, in: Cities and Entrepreneurship National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  5. Vania Ceccato & Mats Wilhemson, 2011. "Does fear of crime affect apartment prices?," ERSA conference papers ersa10p1012, European Regional Science Association.
  6. Harding, John P. & Rosenblatt, Eric & Yao, Vincent W., 2009. "The contagion effect of foreclosed properties," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(3), pages 164-178, November.
  7. Joshua Congdon-Hohman, 2011. "The Lasting Effects of Crime: The Relationship of Discovered Methamphetamine Laboratories and Home Values," Working Papers 1114, College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics.
  8. Ellen, Ingrid Gould & O'Regan, Katherine, 2010. "Crime and urban flight revisited: The effect of the 1990s drop in crime on cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 247-259, November.
  9. Arbel, Yuval & Ben-Shahar, Danny & Gabriel, Stuart & Tobol, Yossef, 2010. "The local cost of terror: Effects of the second Palestinian Intifada on Jerusalem house prices," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 415-426, November.
  10. Kent Kovacs & Thomas Holmes & Jeffrey Englin & Janice Alexander, 2011. "The Dynamic Response of Housing Values to a Forest Invasive Disease: Evidence from a Sudden Oak Death Infestation," Environmental & Resource Economics, European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 49(3), pages 445-471, July.
  11. James Alm & Keith Finlay, 2012. "Who Benefits from Tax Evasion?," Working Papers 1214, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
  12. Luc Anselin & Daniel Arribas-Bel, 2011. "Spatial Fixed Effects and Spatial Dependence," GeoDa Center Working Papers 1045, GeoDa Center for Geospatial Analysis and Computation.
  13. Christopher F. Parmeter & Jaren C. Pope, 2012. "Quasi-Experiments and Hedonic Property Value Methods," Working Papers 2012-7, University of Miami, Department of Economics.
  14. Kuminoff, Nicolai V. & Jarrah, Abdul Salam, 2010. "A new approach to computing hedonic equilibria and investigating the properties of locational sorting models," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 322-335, May.

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