Temperature and assault in an urban environment: An empirical study in the city of Seoul, South Korea

Abstract

Although weather is expected to influence human behavior, including crime, its association with crime has been relatively understudied in an environmental context of small areal and temporal units. This study investigates the association between temperature and assaults in the city of Seoul, South Korea. It also examines how interaction between temperature and socio-economic variables relates to assaults. Monthly assault counts in small administrative units for a 36-month period are described with Bayesian Poisson models. Employing the space-time structure of the dataset, these Poisson models are specified with a set of spatial and/or temporal effects and estimated with the integrated nested Laplace approximation (INLA). Results show that a model specification accounting for spatial and temporal structure better explains the data. Also, results indicate that assault risk is higher in high temperatures, areas with low economic status, and/or highly commercialized land use areas. Moreover, significant interactions between temperature and environmental variables (specifically, economic status and commercial land use) are found.