scholarly journals Crime and individual and neighbourhood sociodemographic characteristics in the City of Toronto

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabby Lee

The overall objective of this study is to determine what neighbourhood and offender-related demographic characteristics impact crime rates in the City of Toronto. By doing so, quantitative and qualitative approaches were implemented in this study. This study includes both property and violent crime datasets from 2014-2016 and census related information from the 2011 Canadian Census. The advancing techniques of Geographical Information System (GIS) has been explored and applied to achieve a thorough understanding of crime occurrences and patterns in the city. Hotspot and Kernel Density mapping were applied to analyze the spatial distribution of crime occurrences and account for spatial autocorrelation. Findings revealed that property and violent crimes across the three years of study showed similar distribution of significant hotspots in the core, Northwest, and East end of the city. An Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression was conducted to examine the ways in which individual and neighbourhood demographic characteristics predict the effects of crime occurrences. The OLS model was a good predictor for offender-related demographics as opposed to neighbourhood level demographics at the 0.05 significant level. These findings revealed that social disadvantaged neighbourhood characteristics such as low income, unemployment, low education, female lone parent were poor predictors of property crimes but good predictors for violent crimes. However, individual characteristics were.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabby Lee

The overall objective of this study is to determine what neighbourhood and offender-related demographic characteristics impact crime rates in the City of Toronto. By doing so, quantitative and qualitative approaches were implemented in this study. This study includes both property and violent crime datasets from 2014-2016 and census related information from the 2011 Canadian Census. The advancing techniques of Geographical Information System (GIS) has been explored and applied to achieve a thorough understanding of crime occurrences and patterns in the city. Hotspot and Kernel Density mapping were applied to analyze the spatial distribution of crime occurrences and account for spatial autocorrelation. Findings revealed that property and violent crimes across the three years of study showed similar distribution of significant hotspots in the core, Northwest, and East end of the city. An Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression was conducted to examine the ways in which individual and neighbourhood demographic characteristics predict the effects of crime occurrences. The OLS model was a good predictor for offender-related demographics as opposed to neighbourhood level demographics at the 0.05 significant level. These findings revealed that social disadvantaged neighbourhood characteristics such as low income, unemployment, low education, female lone parent were poor predictors of property crimes but good predictors for violent crimes. However, individual characteristics were.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-210
Author(s):  
Jiseon Ahn

Incorporating demographic variables in brand management provides many practical benefits for service providers. Although the impact of customers’ perceived values on their attitude and behavior has been extensively examined in the past, studies connecting customers’ demographic characteristics and their tourism behavior remain scarce. Thus, this study aims to empirically investigate the role of demographic variables (e.g. gender, age, income, and marital status) in the relationship between perceived value and brand-related behavior. Specifically, the research conducts several multigroup analyses to examine how demographic factors link Malaysian customers’ behavior toward integrated resort brands. Demographic factors are found to associate with customers’ perceived spiritual, status, efficiency, and aesthetic values. Findings reveal that customers’ individual characteristics and perceived values produce different results in their future behavioral intention toward integrated resort brands. In addition, the impact of spiritual and aesthetic values on brand loyalty is stronger among male customers than among female customers. Moreover, personal satisfaction is highly influential among low-income and married customers. On the basis of these findings, this study provides implications not only for integrated resort service providers but also for destination marketers to develop micromarketing strategies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lu Wang ◽  
Gabby Lee ◽  
Ian Williams

Criminal activities are often unevenly distributed over space. The literature shows that the occurrence of crime is frequently concentrated in particular neighbourhoods and is related to a variety of socioeconomic and crime opportunity factors. This study explores the broad patterning of property and violent crime among different socio-economic stratums and across space by examining the neighbourhood socioeconomic conditions and individual characteristics of offenders associated with crime in the city of Toronto, which consists of 140 neighbourhoods. Despite being the largest urban centre in Canada, with a fast-growing population, Toronto is under-studied in crime analysis from a spatial perspective. In this study, both property and violent crime data sets from the years 2014 to 2016 and census-based Ontario-Marginalisation index are analysed using spatial and quantitative methods. Spatial techniques such as Local Moran’s I are applied to analyse the spatial distribution of criminal activity while accounting for spatial autocorrelation. Distance-to-crime is measured to explore the spatial behaviour of criminal activity. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) linear regression is conducted to explore the ways in which individual and neighbourhood demographic characteristics relate to crime rates at the neighbourhood level. Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) is used to further our understanding of the spatially varying relationships between crime and the independent variables included in the OLS model. Property and violent crime across the three years of the study show a similar distribution of significant crime hot spots in the core, northwest, and east end of the city. The OLS model indicates offender-related demographics (i.e., age, marital status) to be a significant predictor of both types of crime, but in different ways. Neighbourhood contextual variables are measured by the four dimensions of the Ontario-Marginalisation Index. They are significantly associated with violent and property crime in different ways. The GWR is a more suitable model to explain the variations in observed property crime rates across different neighbourhoods. It also identifies spatial non-stationarity in relationships. The study provides implications for crime prevention and security through an enhanced understanding of crime patterns and factors. It points to the need for safe neighbourhoods, to be built not only by the law enforcement sector but by a wide range of social and economic sectors and services.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 155
Author(s):  
Hana Al Zahra ◽  
Erie Febrian ◽  
S.C. Djen Amar

<div><p class="1eAbstract-text">This study aims to analyze the factors that influence the attitudes and intentions of Indonesian cooperatives, especially in the city of Bandung in using digital financial service platform. The test conducted in this study is to examine the relationship between Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Knowledge, Trust and Perceived Risk on Attitudes and Intentions, which are tested partially and simultaneously. The method of analysis of this research uses quantitative and qualitative approaches in the form of descriptive - verification. Hypothesis testing uses Partial Least Square (PLS) analysis with a sample of 100 respondents from 70 cooperatives conducting savings and loan activities in the city of Bandung.� The results of the analysis of research data indicate that Knowledge and Trust have a significant positive effect on Attitude and Intention. Perception of Use only has a significant positive effect on attitude. While Perception of Ease and Risk does not have a significant positive effect on Attitude and Intention. The results indicate that Knowledge and Trust have a significant positive effect on Attitude and Intention. Perceived Usefulness only has a significant positive effect on Attitude. While Perceived Ease of Use and Risk does not have a significant positive effect on both Attitude and Intention. Simultaneously all variables X explain 77.9% of Attitude and 86.5% of Intention.</p></div>


Author(s):  
Domininkas Burba

Bridges and ferries, as objects of dispute and crime locations among the eighteenth century nobles of Vilnius district, is the main topic of research in this article. Case materials and auxiliary documents from the records of Vilnius district castle and land courts reveal how often bridges are mentioned in the court processes in both violent and non-violent crimes. Research explores what types of violent crimes took place on bridges or ferries most often. It also works on questions of geographic localisation and statistics, discussing general situation of bridges in Vilnius and its neighbouring areas in the eighteenth century. Bridges are regularly mentioned in the books of the eighteenth century Vilnius castle and land courts, albeit most references are not related to conflicts and bridges are mentioned as orientation marks or in reference to location of a real estate object. Both non-violent legal disputes, involving bridges as objects, and violent crimes on the bridges were not in multitude, however non-violent crimes were in smaller numbers. There were seven dispute cases about lands, properties and plots of land where bridges and ferries are mentioned. Non-violent conflicts mostly took place in rural areas of the district, four of them, and three such disputes happened in Vilnius (one on the Green Bridge and two on the bridges over the River Vilnia). Most commonly recorded violent crime on a bridge was beating and, since this was the most common type of crime perpetrated by nobles in the eighteenth century Vilnius district, this trend is logical. A bridge is once mentioned in the record about a raid. In terms of location, more crimes on the bridges took place in the rural space, although this particular space wasn’t dominant, since six crimes were reported in the province and five in the city – two in Vilnius on the Green (Stone) Bridge, two on the bridges over the River Vilnia and one on a ferry near Šnipiškės. Trends in crime locations match general crime tendencies in Vilnius district, where more crimes took place in the rural space than in the urban one. One may guess, that the rare mention of bridges partially testifies to the fact that in the eighteenth century Vilnius district level of communication was not high and there were not too many bridges. On the other hand, when assessing trends in violent crimes in Vilnius district it was revealed that bridge based crimes comprised only one percent of all crimes. Having in mind that bridge is a relatively small object, compared to several different or other urban and rural spaces, this number isn’t that small. Keywords: Vilnius district, castle court, land court, crimes, nobles, peasants, bridges, ferries, passings.


Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 467
Author(s):  
Shih-Chih Chen ◽  
Shing-Han Li ◽  
Shih-Chi Liu ◽  
David C. Yen ◽  
Athapol Ruangkanjanases

In addition to the rapid development of global information and communications technology (ICT) and the Internet, recent rapid growth in cloud computing technology represents another important trend. Individual continuance intention towards information technology is a critical area in which information systems research can be performed. This study aims to develop an integrated model designed to explain and predict an individual’s continuance intention towards personal cloud services based on the concepts of technology readiness (TR) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2), moderated by gender, age, and experience of personal cloud services. The key results of the partial least square test largely support the proposed model’s validity and the significant impact of effort expectancy, social influence, hedonic motivation, price value, habit, and technology readiness on continuance intention towards personal cloud services. In addition to providing symmetric theoretical support with the proposed model and transforming the individual characteristics of TR into UTAUT2, this study could be used to enhance and analyze users’ adoption of personal cloud services and also increase the symmetry of the model’s explanation and prediction. The findings from this research contribute to providing practical implications and academic resources as well as improving our understanding of personal cloud service applications.


Author(s):  
Rachel Peletz ◽  
Caroline Delaire ◽  
Joan Kones ◽  
Clara MacLeod ◽  
Edinah Samuel ◽  
...  

Unsafe sanitation is an increasing public health concern for rapidly expanding cities in low-income countries. Understanding household demand for improved sanitation infrastructure is critical for planning effective sanitation investments. In this study, we compared the stated and revealed willingness to pay (WTP) for high-quality, pour-flush latrines among households in low-income areas in the city of Nakuru, Kenya. We found that stated WTP for high-quality, pour-flush latrines was much lower than market prices: less than 5% of households were willing to pay the full costs, which we estimated between 87,100–82,900 Kenyan Shillings (KES), or 871–829 USD. In addition, we found large discrepancies between stated and revealed WTP. For example, 90% of households stated that they would be willing to pay a discounted amount of 10,000 KES (100 USD) for a high-quality, pour-flush latrine, but only 10% of households redeemed vouchers at this price point (paid via six installment payments). Households reported that financial constraints (i.e., lack of cash, other spending priorities) were the main barriers to voucher redemption, even at highly discounted prices. Our results emphasize the importance of financial interventions that address the sizable gaps between the costs of sanitation products and customer demand among low-income populations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariel Salgado ◽  
Weixin Li ◽  
Fahad Alhasoun ◽  
Inés Caridi ◽  
Marta Gonzalez

AbstractWe present an urban science framework to characterize phone users’ exposure to different street context types based on network science, geographical information systems (GIS), daily individual trajectories, and street imagery. We consider street context as the inferred usage of the street, based on its buildings and construction, categorized in nine possible labels. The labels define whether the street is residential, commercial or downtown, throughway or not, and other special categories. We apply the analysis to the City of Boston, considering daily trajectories synthetically generated with a model based on call detail records (CDR) and images from Google Street View. Images are categorized both manually and using artificial intelligence (AI). We focus on the city’s four main racial/ethnic demographic groups (White, Black, Hispanic and Asian), aiming to characterize the differences in what these groups of people see during their daily activities. Based on daily trajectories, we reconstruct most common paths over the street network. We use street demand (number of times a street is included in a trajectory) to detect each group’s most relevant streets and regions. Based on their street demand, we measure the street context distribution for each group. The inclusion of images allows us to quantitatively measure the prevalence of each context and points to qualitative differences on where that context takes place. Other AI methodologies can further exploit these differences. This approach presents the building blocks to further studies that relate mobile devices’ dynamic records with the differences in urban exposure by demographic groups. The addition of AI-based image analysis to street demand can power up the capabilities of urban planning methodologies, compare multiple cities under a unified framework, and reduce the crudeness of GIS-only mobility analysis. Shortening the gap between big data-driven analysis and traditional human classification analysis can help build smarter and more equal cities while reducing the efforts necessary to study a city’s characteristics.


BMJ Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. e044549
Author(s):  
Sangkyun Jo ◽  
Duk Bin Jun ◽  
Sungho Park

ObjectiveWe evaluate the effectiveness of mild disease differential copayment policy aimed at reducing unnecessary patient visits to secondary/tertiary healthcare institutions in South Korea.DesignRetrospective study using difference-in-difference design.SettingSample Research database provided by the Korean National Health Insurance Service, between 2010 and 2013.Participants206 947 patients who visited healthcare institutions to treat mild diseases during the sample period.MethodsA linear probability model with difference-in-difference approach was adopted to estimate the changes in patients’ healthcare choices associated with the differential copayment policy. The dependent variable was a binary variable denoting whether a patient visited primary healthcare or secondary/tertiary healthcare to treat her/his mild disease. Patients’ individual characteristics were controlled with a fixed effect.ResultsWe observed significant decrease in the proportion of patients choosing secondary/tertiary healthcare over primary healthcare by 2.99 per cent point. The decrease associated with the policy was smaller by 14% in the low-income group compared with richer population, greater by 19% among the residents of Seoul metropolitan area than among people living elsewhere, and greater among frequent healthcare visitors by 33% than among people who less frequently visit healthcare.ConclusionThe mild disease differential copayment policy of South Korea was successful in discouraging unnecessary visits to secondary/tertiary healthcare institutions to treat mild diseases that can be treated well in primary healthcare.


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