Criminogenic Exposure Research Articles

Comparing Rural and Urban Juvenile Delinquency in Slovenia: Testing for Situational Action Theory

ABSTRACT The paper employs Situational Action Theory (SAT) to examine juvenile delinquency in rural and urban Slovenia, an area previously unexplored to analyze rural/urban differences. Utilizing data from the Slovenian International Self-Report Delinquency (ISRD4) study, responses from 988 urban and 913 rural Slovenian youths aged 15–17 are examined. OLS regressions reveal differences in delinquency patterns between rural and urban areas, with SAT concepts like morality, self-control, criminal propensity, and criminogenic exposure being significant predictors, validating the theory as a useful theoretical framework in Slovenia. The effects appear stronger in rural contexts. The paper concludes with a discussion on limitations, future research directions, and policy recommendations.

Cyberbullying perpetration on social media: A situational action perspective

The advent of social media platforms has made cyberbullying a growing concern. Current studies primarily investigate singular individual-level or environmental-level factors, yet cyberbullying is a multifaceted phenomenon that cannot be fully understood through single-dimensional perspectives. In this research, we draw on situational action theory (SAT) to explore how cyberbullying develops on social media by examining the synergistic effect of individual propensity and criminogenic exposure. Our empirical results reveal that individuals’ cyberbullying behavior is predominantly influenced by previous habits and exposure to the cyberbullying behavior of important others. Furthermore, individuals tend to employ neutralization techniques to rationalize their cyberbullying behaviors.

Aggressive spectators in sporting milieus: A test of Situational Action Theory

ABSTRACT Violence among spectators in sports is a global phenomenon posing hazards for players, match officials, and other participants. Despite its widespread prevalence, scant criminological research has investigated the matter. To fill this void, this study examines the predictive efficacy of key theoretical constructs derived from Situational Action Theory on aggressive behaviour among a sample of 384 soccer spectators in Iran. Results reveal that crime propensity, criminogenic exposure, action alternatives, and choice have direct effects on spectator engagement in violent behaviour. Furthermore, results demonstrate that crime propensity and criminogenic exposure (propensity*exposure) and action alternatives and choice (action alternatives*choice) interact to increase violence among sport spectators in a manner consistent with the theory. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

The association between child maltreatment and juvenile delinquency in the context of Situational Action Theory: Crime propensity and criminogenic exposure as mediators in a sample of European youth?  

The association between child maltreatment and juvenile delinquency in the context of Situational Action Theory: Crime propensity and criminogenic exposure as mediators in a sample of European youth?  

Using police data to measure criminogenic exposure in residential and school contexts: experiences from a data linkage project in Germany

ABSTRACT Police data and survey research provide different bases to inform research on crime and delinquency. We argue that linking police data on local crime incidences to criminological surveys allows for new insights on the role of residential and school contexts for juvenile delinquency and violence. We describe the challenges and solutions of combining these data sources in a collaboration between the state police of North Rhine-Westphalia – Germany’s most populous state – and social scientists from a major German university. In this academic-practitioner partnership, data from a four-wave longitudinal study of more than 3800 students were linked to spatially aggregated data from the police crime statistics for the years 2013–2016. We discuss how the simulation of nearby addresses can serve as a tool for anonymized data linkage, how knowledge of the local data collection practices is crucial to evaluate the geocoding accuracy of address-level crime data, and how sensitivity and implication analyses can help to reduce uncertainties at the analysis stage. We also give recommendations for future research and data collection practices.

Explaining Chinese Delinquency: Self-Control, Morality, and Criminogenic Exposure

This study extends the testing of situational action theory (SAT) to a Chinese population, and sheds new light on the directions of the moderation relationships between self-control and morality, and between crime propensity and criminogenic exposure on delinquency. Relying on a large, representative sample of middle school students from two areas of Guizhou, China ( N = 2,498), we find that both self-control and morality have significant inhibiting effects on delinquency. Moreover, self-control has a more profound curbing effect on delinquency among adolescents with higher levels of morality. Meanwhile, the promoting effect of crime propensity on delinquency decreases when levels of risky exposure increase. When adolescents have more unsupervised activities and delinquent peers, their crime propensity affects delinquency to a lesser extent. Our study confirms that individual and situational factors interlock in determining delinquency, and reiterates the value of empirical testing across cultures to validate and possibly improve general theories of crime.

The association between child maltreatment and juvenile delinquency in the context of Situational Action Theory: Crime propensity and criminogenic exposure as mediators in a sample of European youth?

The current study investigates the association between physical child maltreatment and juvenile delinquent behavior in the context of the Situational Action Theory (SAT) (Wikström, 2006, 2017, 2020). Self-control, morality and exposure to criminogenic settings are proposed as possible mechanisms explaining the association between physical child maltreatment and adolescent offending. The hypotheses are tested in a subsample of the third wave of the International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD3), a large international non-clinical study on delinquency and victimization among adolescents. The final sample consists of N = 24,956 adolescents aged 12–16 years from nine West European countries. While controlling for dependence due to nested data and several covariates, the models are tested for overall offending and separately for violent and property offending. Results confirm that physical child maltreatment is associated with the main concepts of SAT (lower self-control; lower morality; and more exposure to criminogenic environments), which in turn are associated with juvenile delinquency. The models show partial mediation for overall offending, property offending and violent offending. The findings provide support for the theoretical prowess of SAT and its main concepts: self-control, morality and exposure to criminogenic settings as mediators in the well-established physical child maltreatment/delinquency link. These findings are consistent with the ‘cycle of violence’ perspective and contribute to the theoretical clarification of the mechanisms involved in the child maltreatment/delinquency link. The findings fail to confirm a ‘crime-specific propensity’. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for prevention.

Performance Enhancing Drug Use Among Professional Athletes: Testing the Applicability of Key Theoretical Concepts Derived From Situational Action Theory

Doping, or performance enhancing drug use, has long been a social and health problem among athletes. Despite the issues associated with doping and the illegality of using these drugs, little criminological research has examined why athletes engage in this deviant behavior. The present study seeks to do so by applying key theoretical concepts derived from, and testing the predictive efficiency of, situational action theory on professional athletes’ past, current, and future performance enhancing drug use. We employ self-report data from a random sample of 680 professional athletes from Rasht, Iran. Ordinary least squares regression is used to analyze these data. Findings suggest that crime propensity and criminogenic exposure increase athletes’ doping behavior. In addition, we find the interaction term between crime propensity and criminogenic exposure influences performance enhancing drug use among professional athletes, while increasing the model’s predictive power. Finally, in contrast to situational action theory, we find that known correlates of deviance (education, age, and gender) still influence athletes’ doping behavior even when key theoretical variables are included in the model.

Cyberbullying against Rivals: Application of Key Theoretical Concepts Derived from Situational Action Theory

ABSTRACT We apply key theoretical concepts derived from, and test the predictive efficiency of, situational action theory on sports fans’ decision to engage in cyberbullying perpetration against rivals. To do so, we employ self-report data from a random sample of 508 students from an Iranian university. Ordinary least squares regression is used to analyze these data. In accordance with situational action theory’s propositions, both crime propensity and criminogenic exposure increase fans’ decision to engage in cyberbullying perpetration. Additionally, the interaction of crime propensity and criminogenic exposure increases fans’ engagement in cyberbullying perpetration, while the inclusion of the interaction term increases the model’s predictive power. In contrast to Wikström’s propositions, however, demographic variables (gender, age, education) remain significant even when situational action theory’s constructs are added into the model.

How Exceptional Is India? A Test of Situational Action Theory

This study explores the generalizability of Situational Action Theory (SAT) in India by testing hypotheses related to the person–environment interaction in explaining offending. Drawing on data from a sample of 872 students between the ages of 14 and 17 from an Indian city collected as part of the International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD3), we tested the hypothesis that Indian youths will report more delinquent acts if they have a higher propensity to commit crime combined with a greater exposure to criminogenic activities. Our findings show unequivocal support for the applicability of SAT in India where youths reported a slight increase in offending behavior if they exercised low self-control or if they were less moralistic (i.e., they were more crime-prone), or when exposed to criminal activities or peers. Consistent with tests of SAT in other contexts, we find that exposure to criminogenic environments increases offending for youth with higher levels of criminal propensity but does not impact youth with lower levels of criminal propensity. We speculate that the overall low rate of delinquent offending coupled with the cultural milieu of Indian youths may explain why criminogenic exposure may be less relevant in light of young people’s strong avoidance of rule-breaking.

Morality, delinquent peer association, and criminogenic exposure: (How) does change predict change?

According to the Situational Action Theory, stronger morality inhibits the perception of alternatives to law-breaking action, thus lessening the probability of crime and delinquency. Research indicates that morality might be affected by delinquent peer association and in turn affect criminogenic exposure. This article studies how morality develops during late adolescence using data from the longitudinal project Malmö Individual and Neighbourhood Development Study. Using linear growth modelling, the study finds that a decrease in morality is associated with a simultaneous increase in delinquency peer association. No change in criminogenic exposure was detected. The results are discussed alongside theoretical and methodological implications.

The Contributions of Propensity, Delinquent Peers, Low Parental Supervision, and Empathy to the Emergence of Antisocial Behavior in Childhood and Adolescence: Testing Developmental Path Models Combining Psychological- and Sociological-Criminological Approaches

Psychological- and sociological-criminological research refers to, for example, cumulative risk factor models (e.g., Lösel & Bender, 2003) and Situational Action Theory (SAT; e.g., Wikström, 2006). The German longitudinal study “Chances and Risks in the Life Course” (research project A2, Collaborative Research Center 882; e.g., Reinecke, Stemmler, & Wittenberg, 2016) focuses upon the development of antisocial behavior from a psychological and sociological point of view. Two-wave panel data of two cohorts (children and adolescents) were utilized to test the power of developmental path models investigating the development of antisocial behavior. Individual risk seems to have both direct and indirect influences on antisocial behavior, supporting the ideas of risk factor models; antisocial behavior might be the outcome of the interaction between propensity and criminogenic exposure, so there is evidence for SAT. Additionally, empathy seems to be related to both propensity and low parental supervision. Implications for the study of antisocial behavior in childhood and adolescence are discussed in line with developmental criminology.

Differentiating Right-Wing Extremism from Potential for Violent Extremism: The Role of Criminogenic Exposure

Differentiating Right-Wing Extremism from Potential for Violent Extremism: The Role of Criminogenic Exposure

Young people's differential vulnerability to criminogenic exposure: Bridging the gap between people- and place-oriented approaches in the study of crime causation.

The overall purpose of this study is to contribute to bridging the gap between people- and place-oriented approaches in the study of crime causation. To achieve this we will explore some core hypotheses derived from Situational Action Theory about what makes young people crime prone and makes places criminogenic, and about the interaction between crime propensity and criminogenic exposure predicting crime events. We will also calculate the expected reduction in aggregate levels of crime that will occur as a result of successful interventions targeting crime propensity and criminogenic exposure. To test the hypotheses we will utilize a unique set of space–time budget, small area community survey, land-use and interviewer-led questionnaire data from the prospective longitudinal Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+) and an artificial neural network approach to modelling. The results show that people’s crime propensity (based on their personal morals and abilities to exercise self-control) has the bulk of predictive power, but also that including criminogenic exposure (being unsupervised with peers and engaged in unstructured activities in residential areas of poor collective efficacy or commercial centres) demonstrates a substantial increase in predictive power (in addition to crime propensity). Moreover, the results show that the probability of crime is strongest when a crime-prone person is in a criminogenic setting and, crucially, that the higher a person’s crime propensity the more vulnerable he or she is to influences of criminogenic exposure. Finally, the findings suggest that a reduction in people’s crime propensity has a much bigger impact on their crime involvement than a reduction in their exposure to criminogenic settings.

Conditional relevance of controls: A simultaneous test of the influences of self-control and deterrence on criminal behaviour in the context of Situational Action Theory

Situational Action Theory includes a series of propositions on the interaction between the moral filter and internal and external controls. These reflections are condensed into the principle of the conditional relevance of controls and the principle of moral correspondence. In this study, the interplay of controls and moral forces is tested within the framework of structural equation modelling. Survey data from two cohorts of students in the German cities of Dortmund (North-Rhine Westphalia) and Nuremberg (Bavaria) serve as the empirical base. By using multiple group comparisons, the influences of self-control and deterrence on self-reported delinquency are examined simultaneously for four different subgroups of respondents formed on the basis of their levels of crime propensity and criminogenic exposure. The analyses provide support for a conditional relevance of controls, but produce only mixed evidence for the principle of moral correspondence. Controls are more important when the moral filter is weak, but fail to lose their explanatory power among adolescents characterized by both high propensity and strong exposure. Our findings furthermore suggest that self-control appears to matter particularly when the moral context encourages crime and deterrence seems to be influential especially when personal morality encourages crime.

Causes of the causes of juvenile delinquency: Social disadvantages in the context of Situational Action Theory

This article focuses on the relationship between crime and social disadvantages by applying Situational Action Theory (Wikström 2006, 2009; Wikström et al., 2012) to explain the delinquent behaviour of adolescents. According to Situational Action Theory, criminal acts are the result of a perception-choice process that is guided by the interaction of a person’s crime propensity and the criminogenic conditions of the environment. Social disadvantages are not causes of criminal behaviour but rather causes of the causes. Social disadvantages affect the emergence of crime propensity and criminogenic exposure of individuals. This relationship between crime and disadvantages in the context of Situational Action Theory will be empirically tested by applying structural equation modelling and testing for indirect effects of several structural heterogeneities. The results show that the relationship between heterogeneity features and delinquency for the most part is mediated by the theoretical assumptions of SAT.

Urban Poverty and Neighborhood Effects on Crime: Incorporating Spatial and Network Perspectives.

Research on neighborhoods and crime is on a remarkable growth trajectory. In this article, we survey important recent developments in the scholarship on neighborhood effects and the spatial stratification of poverty and urban crime. We advance the case that, in understanding the impact of neighborhoods and poverty on crime, sociological and criminological research would benefit from expanding the analytical focus from residential neighborhoods to the network of neighborhoods individuals are exposed to during their daily routine activities. This perspective is supported by reemerging scholarship on activity spaces and macro-level research on inter-neighborhood connections. We highlight work indicating that non-residential contexts add variation in criminogenic exposure, which in turn influence offending behavior and victimization risk. Also, we draw on recent insights from research on gang violence, social and institutional connections, and spatial mismatch, and call for advancements in the scholarship on urban poverty that investigates the salience of inter-neighborhood connections in evaluating the spatial stratification of criminogenic risk for individuals and communities.

Review of Per-Olof Wikstrom et al., Breaking Rules: The Social and Situational Dynamics of Young People’s Urban Crime

In Breaking Rules: The Social and Situational Dynamics of Young People’s Urban Crime, the authors examine the interactive elements that attempt to explain the commission of crime among youth within the context of specific locations. By examining the social structure of an urban setting in the United Kingdom, the text offers insightful information and research associated with the relative value of the Situational Action Theory within the context of criminological theory. This includes a number of methodological aspects including the descriptive and research characteristics related to criminological exposure and propensities. A key component of the text underscores the relationship between youth activity, exposure to criminogenic settings, and the existence of criminal activity within certain locations through the use of space-time analysis and perception-choice processes. In chapter 1, entitled Situational Action Theory, the authors establish a premise for the efficacy associated with the situational action theory (SAT) by discussing the incoherent and fundamental deficiencies that exist within criminological theory. To begin this assessment, various concepts and assumptions of the SAT are identified along with a number of individual, environmental, and situational factors related to the commission of crime and delinquent behavior. The basis of utilizing the SAT theory in relation to youth crime offers a perspective which proposes that the commission of offensive behavior is a result of perception, interaction, criminal propensity, and exposure. This lends itself into a more extensive description of the causes of deviant behavior through the analysis of perception and social interaction. The chapter concludes by comparing the use of the SAT along with a number of key foundational theories (i.e., social disorganization, routine activity) as well as the importance of incorporating both social and situational aspects in the explanation of deviant behavior. Chapters 2 and 3, entitled The Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study and Young People’s Crime, Crime Propensity, and Criminogenic Exposure: Key Constructs and Basic Findings, presents the research methods associated with the investigation of the behavior of youth within a city (Peterborough) in the United Kingdom. This begins with a discussion regarding the rationale associated with the selection of the location Asian Criminology (2014) 9:245–248 DOI 10.1007/s11417-013-9171-5

Crime propensity, criminogenic exposure and violent scenario responses: Testing situational action theory in regression and Rasch models

In this paper, we argue that quantitative empirical research to explain and predict criminal and related behaviour can benefit greatly from explicit theories of action linking individual and contextual factors in the causation of crime. Such theories foster a systematic selection of causal variables for data collection and hypothesis testing instead of a more indiscriminate accumulation of ‘risk factor’ correlates. Moreover, action theory encourages statistical modelling of crime causation beyond the most common linear regression. This paper illustrates both points by estimating two empirical models – a conventional logistic model and a Rasch model – on scenario response data concerning youth violence. The findings of this study show that the extent to which young people indicate a violent response to a provocation is dependent on their (law relevant) morality and ability to exercise self-control as well as the deterrent qualities (monitoring) of the setting.

Activity Fields and the Dynamics of Crime

Our current understanding of the role of the social environment in crime causation is at best rudimentary. Guided by the theoretical framework of Situational Action Theory, and using data from the ESRC financed Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+), this paper aims to propose how we can better theorise and study the role of the social environment, particularly the person and place interaction, in crime causation. We will introduce, and illustrate the usefulness of, a space–time budget methodology as a means of capturing people’s exposure to settings and describing their activity fields. We will suggest and demonstrate that, combined with a small area community survey and psychometric measures of individual characteristics, a space–time budget is a powerful tool for advancing our knowledge about the role of the social environment, and its interaction with people’s crime propensity, in crime causation. Our unique data allows us to study the convergence in time and space of crime propensity, criminogenic exposure and crime events. As far as we are aware, such an analysis has never before been carried out. The findings show that there are (a) clear associations between young people’s activity fields and their exposure to criminogenic settings, (b) clear associations between their exposure to criminogenic settings and their crime involvement, and, crucially, (c) that the influence of criminogenic exposure depends on a person’s crime propensity. Having a crime-averse morality and strong ability to exercise self-control appears to make young people practically situationally immune to the influences of criminogenic settings, while having a crime-prone morality and poor ability to exercise self-control appears to make young people situationally vulnerable to the influences of criminogenic settings.