The fracking boom and crime rates in rural American states: Some critical insights

Abstract

Based on seminal and anecdotal evidence, we postulate a proposition that shale oil and gas extraction induce crime through different channels. We scrutinize the causal linkage between the fracking boom and crime rates by applying the Generalized Synthetic Control (GSC) approach in the context of Arkansas, North Dakota, and West Virginia states while considering several other states as the comparison group. We observe the prevalence of the crime rates are somewhat homogeneous before the fracking boom among treatment and comparison states or the pre-fracking boom parallel trend. And our empirical findings confirm our proposition that states with the fracking boom encountered more crimes than comparison states with an estimated 15.68 million (2008 dollar) worth of the annual victimization cost.