Life Satisfaction and Individual Willingness to Pay for Crime Reduction

Abstract

Manning M., Fleming C. M. and Ambrey C. L. Life satisfaction and individual willingness to pay for crime reduction, Regional Studies. This paper uses the life satisfaction approach to estimate the intangible cost of crime in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Results show that: (1) property crime is negatively associated with life satisfaction; (2) the implicit willingness to pay to decrease property crime by one offence per 1000 residents in the local government area (LGA) in the previous 12 months is A$82 per household (A$32 per person); and (3) the difference in implicit willingness-to-pay estimates when using restricted windfall income compared with household income is considerable. These results are robust to a significant number of controls.