Abstract
Abstract The crime rate can vary in different geographical areas, and several studies have tried to explain the crime rate by concentrating on the socio-economic characteristics of an environment. The literature on the subject shows a lack of attention to spatial analysis and its relationship which this research attempts to address. The main aim of this study was to investigate the spatial correlation between social capital and crime in the city of Pardis in Iran. A five-point Likert questionnaire survey was conducted among 297 citizens of the new town of Pardis. The survey included 27 questions about the social capital component (trust, attention, awareness) and crime hotspots collected from the police office. A mapping raster layer of both crime and social capital and Band Collection Statistics Tools in ArcGIS were used to show the spatial correlation between crime and social capital. The main findings of this study revealed that there was a statistically significant reverse correlation between social capital and crime in the correlation matrix. The study also illustrated that some of the crime subsets such as fighting (r = -0.74), family conflicts (r = -0.72), and moral crime (r = - 0.62) were more related to social capital than other social capital components in a neighborhood.
Highlights
This research builds on the existing foundation of research into social capital and crime by incorporating spatial analysis techniques which will provide a unique insight into this relationship
This study measured the spatial correlation between social capital and crime, and this correlated with six different types of crime which were assessed using the Band Collection Statistics (BCS) tool
Conflict, followed by fighting, and moral crime were found to be more spatially associated with the crime rate than other social capital components in the city of Pardis
Summary
This research builds on the existing foundation of research into social capital and crime by incorporating spatial analysis techniques which will provide a unique insight into this relationship. AKÇOMAK & TER WEEL (2012) assessed the impact of social capital on crime in the Netherlands. They present a methodology to measure the social capital; they illustrated the association between social capital indicators and crime in 142 municipalities in the Netherlands. They mentioned that social capital or even the socio-economic status of their residents provided a better and in depth understanding of (OMAHA, 2007).
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