What Explains Variation in Property Crime Rates across Thailand’s Provinces?
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Abstract
Studies conducted in the past have suggested that economic and social conditions are factors that may or may not contribute to crimes. Crime rates across Thai provinces which are reported by the authorities indicate that a large proportion of crime is property crime. Hence, this study aimed to investigate the interaction effect between social and economic conditions on property crime rates in Thailand. This quantitative research utilized existing statistics and assigned each province to be a unit of analysis. The data analysis was performed by the PLS-SEM technique using SmartPLS 2.0. The results of the study show that economic conditions have a major impact on crime rates with a path coefficient value of .491, a T-statistic value of 3.904, and a level of significance of p < .01. The result of the study rejects the hypothesis that the interaction effect between social and economic conditions has a significant impact on property crime rates. The outcome of this research will be beneficial to government agencies responsible for supporting and promoting employment and appropriate income per capita. Furthermore, it will benefit public and private agencies as well as communities in crime prevention which requires extra vigilance in poor economic conditions.
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