The Local Geography of Transnational Terrorist Attacks

Why are some locations more attractive targets for transnational terrorism than others? We know that transnational terrorist attacks occur in all regions and a majority of countries globally; yet intuition tells us also that not all locations within each country are equally likely to host an attack. Remarkably little is known about the local-level conditions and attributes that determine more precisely where transnational terror attacks occur. In this paper, we examine the determinants of transnational terrorist attack locations, specifically contending that individual locations can be characterized in two respects that directly impact the likelihood with which they will host terrorist attacks: vulnerability and value. In order to test these expectations, we regress newly geocoded data on transnational terrorism against two sets of covariates that are operationalized as proxies for vulnerability and value. Our analyses confirm that attacks are most likely at locations with recent civil violence, proximity to the capital city and international borders, low levels of forest cover but mountainous terrain, and locations with larger populations and higher levels of economic activity. Collectively, these findings corroborate our vulnerability and value hypotheses.