Tourism and crime: Implications for regional development policy

Fujii E. T. and Mak J. (1980) Tourism and crime: implications for regional development policy, Reg. Studies 14, 27–36. This paper investigates the hypothesis that tourism generates environmental externalities in the form of increased crimes against persons and property using annual time series data over the period 1961–1975 and cross-section data for 1975 from the State of Hawaii. We find that an increase in the proportion of tourists in the population results in a significantly greater number of burglaries and rapes than a comparable increase in other population subgroups. The implications of the results for regional development planning of the visitor industry are then explored.