Does Government Digital Transformation Reduce Urban Crime: Evidence From a Quasi-Natural Experiment in China

Abstract. Urban green spaces have been associated with various social and environmental benefits, including their potential impact on crime rates. This study investigates the correlation between urban green spaces and crime rates using a combination of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and advanced statistical analysis. By analyzing data from a large metropolitan area, we examine how green space characteristics such as size, type, and maintenance influence crime patterns. Our findings indicate that well-maintained green spaces with diverse amenities can significantly reduce crime rates, whereas neglected areas may become hotspots for criminal activities. The study also explores temporal patterns of crime in relation to green spaces, revealing that adequate lighting and community presence are crucial for nighttime safety. Policy recommendations are provided to help urban planners and policymakers leverage green spaces to enhance urban safety. By integrating multiple analytical techniques, this research contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the role of green spaces in urban crime prevention and offers actionable insights for future urban planning.

Despite widespread popular accounts that link crack cocaine to inner-city decay, little systematic research has analyzed how the emergence of crack affected urban crime. We study this question using FBI crime rates for 27 metropolitan areas and two sources of information on when crack first appeared in those cities. Using methods designed to control for unobserved differences among metropolitan areas, we find that the introduction of crack had substantial effects on crime. In the absence of crack cocaine, the 1991 peak in urban crime rates would have been approximately 10% lower, remaining below the previous peak levels of the early 1980s.

This chapter argues that the crime decline documented in this study requires a fundamental rethinking of the relationship between urban life and urban crime in the 21st century. Most of the high rate of life-threatening violence and predatory crime that observers have regarded as an inherent element of the structure and social content of polyglot big cities in the United States is not a necessary outgrowth of modern urban life. The chapter is organized around four topics. The first section revisits the data presented in Chapter 1 to argue that the scope of New York's decline is singular because its variability undermines conventional assumptions about the link between urban populations and urban crime rates. The second section then contrasts previous assumptions about the malleability and variability of urban crime with the experience in New York City since 1990. The third section provides preliminary data on the impact of crime policies and crime rates on minority populations. The final section considers the implications of what we are learning about the malleability of urban crime for criminological theories about crime causation and distribution and for social theories about modern urban life.

Low-carbon city construction (LCC) is an important strategy for countries desiring to improve environmental quality, realize cleaner production, and achieve sustainable development. Low-carbon cities have attracted widespread attention for their attempts to coordinate the relationship between environmental protection and economic development. Using the panel data from 2006 to 2017 of prefecture-level cities in China, this study applied the difference-in-differences (DID) method to analyze the effects of LCC on the total factor productivity (TFP) of the cities and its possible transmission mechanism. The results show significantly positive effects on TFP, but the effects on each component of TFP are different. Although the LCC has promoted technical progress and scale efficiency, it has inhibited technical efficiency. The accuracy of the results has been confirmed by several robustness tests. Mechanism analysis showed that the pilot policy of low-carbon cities has promoted technical progress and scale efficiency by technological innovation and the upgrading of industrial structure, but resource mismatches among enterprises have been the main reason for reduced technical efficiency. Regional heterogeneity analysis showed that the effects on TFP in the eastern region have been more significant than in the central and western regions. In the eastern region, they have promoted technical progress, while in the central and western regions, they have promoted technical progress and scale efficiency but hindered technical efficiency. This paper presents our findings for the effects of LCC on economic development and provides insightful policy implications for the improvement of technical efficiency in low-carbon cities.

This study examines how crime is reported in the media, how the public perceives crime, and how urban environmental and economic factors interact at both global and local spatial scales to shape criminal activity. The research analyzed 3,507 reports from the top 100 media outlets from 2023 to 2024 and utilized a large language model to extract key information. The test results showed that the inter-coder reliability between human labeling and LLM labeling datasets reached 0.92 and examining the discrepancies between media narratives and actual crime data. By applying traditional econometric and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) geospatial regression techniques, the study revealed the impacts of environmental and economic factors on crime distribution, as well as the spatial relationships between urban structural features (such as road network density and vacant buildings) and crime rates in the Chicago area. Additionally, through Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR), the study further investigated the local differences between crime rates and socio-economic and environmental factors. The research found that selective news reporting might distort public understanding and affect policy responses. The findings provide insights for urban safety strategies and crime prevention policies, emphasizing the need to enhance the accuracy of media reports and public education, and offer valuable guidance for policymakers and urban planners on how to improve urban safety through environmental and economic planning.

This study examines how crime is reported in the media, how the public perceives crime, and how urban environmental and economic factors interact at both global and local spatial scales to shape criminal activity. The research analyzed 3,507 reports from the top 100 media outlets from 2023 to 2024 and utilized a large language model to extract key information. The test results showed that the inter-coder reliability between human labeling and LLM labeling datasets reached 0.92 and examining the discrepancies between media narratives and actual crime data. By applying traditional econometric and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) geospatial regression techniques, the study revealed the impacts of environmental and economic factors on crime distribution, as well as the spatial relationships between urban structural features (such as road network density and vacant buildings) and crime rates in the Chicago area. Additionally, through Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR), the study further investigated the local differences between crime rates and socio-economic and environmental factors. The research found that selective news reporting might distort public understanding and affect policy responses. The findings provide insights for urban safety strategies and crime prevention policies, emphasizing the need to enhance the accuracy of media reports and public education, and offer valuable guidance for policymakers and urban planners on how to improve urban safety through environmental and economic planning.

The purpose of this study is to explore the association with the urban redevelopment areas and crime rates with Shaw & Mckay’s social disorganization perspective. In particular, we examine how its theoretical implication are borne out empirically in redevelopment areas. Main focus on this study is to understand the distinction among redevelopment district designation, progress, and completion due to different dynamics of each stage. The analysis result shows that each stage of redevelopment has a different effect on crime rates. District designation stage has a negative effect on crime rates, but progress stage and completion stage have positive effects on the crime rates. These key findings of this study suggest that existing method of urban redevelopment can increase crime rates in the process, so it is necessary to establish supplement policy.

In recent literature, life satisfaction and welfare have been extensively studied. However, limited attention has been given to the effect that crime may have over these variables. Using the case of Bogotá this paper shows that urban crime rates, specially murder rate, have a positive impact on individuals’ life dissatisfaction. This effect seems to be mediated by the general perception of insecurity and not by the households’ victimization. In particular the perception of insecurity has a great impact on the unhappiness of those households that changed their perceptions because of the criminal activity. The conclusion of this paper is that it is necessary not only to reduce the crime rates, but also to generate good security perceptions.

This study provides a viable path to save energy by means of e-commerce development. Taking the national e-commerce demonstration cities (NEDC) pilots policy implemented in China as a quasi-natural experiment, based on the city panel data from 2006 to 2019, this study applies the multi-period difference-in-difference (DID) method to evaluate the effect of NEDC on energy saving in pilot cities. The empirical results suggest that the NEDC policy obviously contributes to energy conservation. The treated cities reduced energy consumption by 14.2% as a result of the implementation of NEDC, relative to the untreated cities. The conclusions remain valid after conducting robustness tests such as placebo test, instrumental variables regression, propensity score matching-difference-in-difference (PSM-DID), and synthetic difference-in-difference (SDID). The NEDC achieves energy-saving effects through technological innovation, industrial restructuring, and economic agglomeration. Furthermore, the heterogeneity analysis indicates that, in cities with high levels of human capital, well-developed information infrastructure, non-resource-based cities, and favorable business environments, the impact of NEDC on energy saving is more significant. Analysis of spatial effects shows that the implementation of NEDC has negative externalities, increasing energy consumption in the surrounding area. In the context of the digital economy, this paper presents new insights on the relationship between e-commerce and energy consumption and provides policy direction for countries looking for energy-saving solutions.

Indemnificatory housing under the background of Housing Security helps to curb the rise of crime rates, but also attracts low-income groups. They have a demand for housing, but it is difficult for them to rely on their own to solve the housing problem. The aggregation of low-income groups will lead to a decrease in social norms and moral constraints, and will produce ‘Crime Aggregation’ effect. Using panel data from 31 provincial-level regions in China from 2012–2021, this paper explored the effect of Housing Security Level on the overall crime rate. Further, a multi-period double difference model was constructed to analyse whether the construction of affordable housing leads to crime aggregation. The results showed that the crime rate showed a decreasing trend as the Housing Security Level increased. There was no significant change in the crime rate in the Xi’an, China before and after the indemnificatory housing construction. Xi’an has a more rational spatial planning and is not densely built up, resulting in fewer conflicts; in addition, due to China’s local characteristics of its social structural system, residents come from different cities rather than different countries and races, which weakens the effectiveness of social disintegration and has minimal impact on crime.

Despite widespread popular accounts linking crack cocaine inner-city decay systematic research has analyzed the the introduction crack on urban crime. study this question using FBI crime rates for 27 metropolitan areas and two sources of information on the date at which crack first appeared those cities. Using methods designed to control for confounding time trends and unobserved differences among metropolitan areas find that the introduction crack has substantial effects on violent crime essentially no effect on property crime. We explain these results by characterizing crack cocaine as a innovation the market for cocaine intoxication and by positing that different types crimes play different roles the market for illegal drugs. In a market with incomplete property rights and inelastic demand, a technological innovation increases violence on the part distributors but decreases property crime on the part consumers. We also find evidence that the increase in urban crime during the 1980's occurred two distinct phases: an early phase largely attributable the spread crack and a later phase largely unrelated it.

Can the new energy demonstration city policy reduce environmental pollution? Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China

As important carriers of local innovation activities, innovative industrial clusters are attracting increasing attention. Therefore, several countries have started promotion policies for innovative industrial clusters. However, there are few empirical studies on relevant policies. This paper investigates the impact of China’s “innovative industrial cluster pilot” (IICP) policy on regional innovation. Taking the implementation of IICP policy as a quasi-natural experiment and using the panel data of 266 prefecture-level cities in China in 2008-2019, this paper provides strong evidence that IICP policy promotes regional innovation. The conclusion still holds after a battery of robustness checks. The heterogeneity test shows that the promoting effect of IICP policy on innovation is more significant in central and western region than in eastern region. Moreover, the lower the city administrative level and the lower the dependence on natural resource, the more prominent the innovation effect of IICP policy. Further, the mechanism test shows that the IICP policy can promote regional innovation indirectly by strengthening government support for innovation and attracting the agglomeration of science and technological talents, but the mediation effect of industrial structure has not been verified.

China is entering a new period characterized by reaching peak and carbon neutralization, and environmental taxes are increasingly crucial for breaking the "carbon curse" of resource-based cities. Accordingly, using the implementation of China's Environmental Protection Tax Law (EPT Law) as a quasi-natural experiment, this study utilizes the DID model to assess this environmental tax reform's effect in terms of reducing carbon emissions. The research results are as follows: (1) The environmental tax reform (ETR) reduced the intensity of carbon emissions; it additionally promoted reducing total carbon emissions from resource-based cities. (2) The carbon abatement effect can also be achieved by upgrading industrial structures and improving innovation in the area of green technology. (3) The ETR has impacted carbon abatement in resource-based cities more significantly in China's eastern region than in the central or western regions. In contrast, it had less effect on resource-based cities in the regenerative stage than on cities in other stages. (4) The spatial spillover effect of the ETR was significantly positive, aggravating the level of carbon emissions in neighboring cities. Thus, the "pollution haven hypothesis" was tested. Overall, this study deepens the knowledge of ETR and carbon emissions and provides theoretical support and policy suggestions for supporting resource-based cities in a green transformation.

Green innovation is a new driving force to promote green and low-carbon development. Whether an energy transition strategy can induce green innovation is an important question that has not been clearly answered. With the help of panel data from 281 cities in China during 2007–2021, this study considers China’s new energy exemplary city policy as a quasi-natural experiment and conducts a difference-in-differences model to explore the effects and mechanisms of energy transition strategy on urban green innovation. The results show that a new energy exemplary city effectively induces urban green innovation, with mediating mechanisms of increasing government financial support, promoting human capital agglomeration, and improving energy efficiency. The moderating mechanisms test reveals that environmental regulation and intellectual property protection play a positive moderating role in the promotion of green innovation through the new energy exemplary city policy. Heterogeneity analysis suggests that the new energy exemplary city policy has a stronger effect on promoting green innovation in eastern regions and non-resource-based cities. Our findings not only enrich our understanding of the relationship between energy transition strategy and green innovation but also provide a reference for policymakers to promote energy transition and green innovation.