Daytime and Nighttime Modulated the Activity of Potential Environmental Factors on Theft

ObjectivesAlthough the urban environment is not sufficient in itself to cause crime, it has attracted the interest of many researchers as the situational triggers of criminal incident. Varying in daily cycle, the occurrence of criminal behavior represented a temporal variable in fact, and its temporal variations should not be ignored. The advent of point-level data lead to the possibility of microlevel studies on the relevance of theft to the urban environment. This study differentiates thefts distribution based on their temporal patterns of day and night, and separately measures potential environmental factors on their spatial heterogeneity.MethodsIn this paper, we develop a research framework to incorporate three models, Pearson correlation analysis, regression and best subset selection in order to measure the correlation between potential environmental factors and the spatial distribution of daytime and nighttime theft in urban area Wuhan city, China. The study measures the environmental factors that drive spatial heterogeneity of theft crimes during different temporal periods. It analyzes the spatial distribution patterns of theft crimes and explores the mechanisms through these factors exert their influence.ResultsAnalyses show that the number of daytime and nighttime theft incidents has synchronous seasonal statistical characteristics, while the months when they reach peak do not coincide. The results of the experiment found clear support for exponential decay models (e.g., Asymptotic1 and Clark model) demonstrate excellent fitting accuracy to describe the relationship between the number of theft incidents and the size of the area in which the offences are committed, which indicates that the rate at which crime risk zone areas decrease is directly proportional to its area values. Compared to nighttime theft, daytime theft exhibits a more pronounced spatial clustering. Population density and shop density are the dominant factors for daytime theft, and for nighttime theft, entertainment density and population density become the dominant factors.ConclusionThe spatial environment influences the probability of theft incidents, and the probability of theft incidents occurring is not consistent across space. Daytime and nighttime modulated the activity of potential environmental factors on theft. This result provides evidence for the person and space-time interaction.