IMPACT OF VICTIMIZATION ON RESIDENTIAL MOBILITY: EXPLAINING RACIAL AND ETHNIC PATTERNS USING THE NATIONAL CRIME VICTIMIZATION SURVEY

• Author: MIN XIE,DAVID MCDOWALL
• Published date: 01 November 2014
• Date: 01 November 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12048

IMPACT OF VICTIMIZATION ON RESIDENTIAL

MOBILITY: EXPLAINING RACIAL AND ETHNIC

PATTERNS USING THE NATIONAL CRIME

VICTIMIZATION SURVEY∗

MIN XIE1and DAVID MCDOWALL2

1Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland,

College Park

2School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany

KEYWORDS: victimization, residential mobility, race, ethnicity, National Crime Vic-

timization Survey (NCVS)

Criminal victimization is known to influence households’ moving decisions, but the-

ories suggest that the processes leading to a moving decision can vary across racial

and ethnic groups. Drawing from current literature, we hypothesized that victimiza-

tion would have a stronger effect on moving decisions for Whites than for Blacks or

Hispanics, and that racial/ethnic residential segregation would moderate the impact of

victimization on mobility. Using a longitudinal sample of 34,134 housing units com-

piled from the National Crime Victimization Survey for the 40 largest metropolitan ar-

eas in the United States (1995–2003), we found results that both support and contradict

the hypotheses. Specifically, White residents display consistent evidence that victimiza-

tion is a significant predictor of household mobility. Blacks and Hispanics, in contrast,

are more varied in their moving behavior after victimization. In addition, significant

differences exist among these groups in responses to victimization and in how mobility

is influenced by residential segregation. Higher levels of residential segregation play

a part in the victimization–mobility relationship among Blacks in a way that is more

complex than we hypothesized.

The relationship between crime and residential mobility has been a subject of dis-

cussion in many disciplines. Sociologists have viewed residential mobility as an indica-

tor of social instability that is both a cause of crime (Shaw and McKay, 1942) and its

likely consequence (Hipp, 2010a; Liska and Bellair, 1995). Economists, demographers,

and geographers have been interested in environmental issues, such as how crime may

affect housing demands and how it may shape population redistribution (e.g., Dubin and

Goodman, 1982; Lynch and Rasmussen, 2001; Tita, Petras, and Greenbaum, 2006). Crime

∗Additional supporting information can be found in the listing for this article in the Wiley Online

Library at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/crim.2014.52.issue-4/issuetoc.

This research was funded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Depart-

ment of Justice, Award No. 2012-R2-CX-0021. The opinions expressed in this article are those of

the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice. We would like to

thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Direct correspondence

to Min Xie, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland, College

Park, MD 20742 (e-mail: mxie@umd.edu).

C2014 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12048

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 52 Number 4 553–587 2014 553

554 XIE & MCDOWALL

has implications for residential transition and sustainability issues (Quigley and Wein-

berg, 1977), and therefore the links between crime and moving are important to planners

and policy makers as well.

Our study extends work on crime and residential mobility by examining how the impact

of criminal victimization varies across racial and ethnic groups. With the U.S. population

growing increasingly diverse, race and ethnicity have become a focus of much of the cur-

rent literature on residential change (see, e.g., Clark, 2007; Frey et al., 2005; Pais, South,

and Crowder, 2009; Sampson and Sharkey, 2008). Using perceptions of crime and police-

recorded crime rates, a principal finding from this work is that aggregate levels of crime

have a greater impact on the moving decisions of Whites than on those of Blacks and

Hispanics (Hipp, 2010a, 2011; Liska and Bellair, 1995; also see a review by South and

Messner, 2000: 98).

The prior studies have highlighted clearly the disadvantaged position that Blacks and

Hispanics have in the housing market. Yet because perceptions of crime or the knowledge

of police crime statistics may influence mobility differently than do personal experiences,

the question remains whether the same patterns hold in the context of actual victimiza-

tion. We do not know, for example, how factors such as socioeconomic status and hous-

ing market conditions intersect with race/ethnicity to influence moving in households that

have experienced recent victimization.

In this article, we address the role of race/ethnicity in two ways. First, we integrate

previously separate lines of research—one tracing the mobility decisions of individual

victims (Dugan, 1999; Xie and McDowall, 2008) and one assessing racial/ethnic housing

inequality (Krivo and Kaufman, 2004; South and Crowder, 1997)—to build a model of

victimization-related mobility that incorporates the contributions of both household and

market-level factors. Second, we extend existing research by using more detailed mea-

sures of criminal victimization. We evaluate not only the frequency of victimizations but

also their attributes, such as injury and property loss, to understand racial/ethnic mobility

differences.

Using longitudinal data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) for 40

metropolitan areas (1995–2003), our results partially confirm and partially contradict the

commonly held expectation from previous work that victimization is less strongly associ-

ated with minority mobility than it is with mobility among Whites. The data also reveal

a mixed pattern for the theoretical expectation that residential segregation will reduce

opportunities for minority residents, Blacks in particular, to move after victimization.

By examining racial/ethnic differences in the relationship between victimization and

mobility, our analysis expands on knowledge about how crime influences residential

change. It shows the utility of standard explanations and, through the detection of pre-

viously unnoticed mobility patterns, it further suggests that these explanations need sub-

stantial modification.

In the next section, we present an overview of theoretical and empirical work on crime

and mobility. This discussion is followed by sections in which we develop the research

hypotheses and describe the data and analytical procedures for the analysis. After pre-

senting the results, we conclude by considering the implications of the findings for current

understandings and for future work.

RACE/ETHNICITY AND VICTIM MOVING DECISIONS 555

PAST RESEARCH AND THEORY

A NOT-SO-SIMPLE QUESTION: ADDING RACE/ETHNICITY TO THE

VICTIMIZATION–MOVING RELATIONSHIP

In the United States, much evidence shows that people who have been victimized by

crime in their neighborhood move more frequently than do their nonvictim peers (Dugan,

1999; Xie and McDowall, 2008). Many researchers have proposed that this relationship

exists in part because of victims’ desire to live in a safe environment (Katz, Kling, and

Liebman, 2001; Pettit, 2004; Skogan, 1990). Evidence suggests that residents who perceive

crime as a significant problem in their neighborhood tend to be more dissatisfied with the

neighborhood and are more likely to express a wish to move (Droettboom et al., 1971;

Hipp, 2009; Kasl and Harburg, 1972; Taub, Taylor, and Dunham, 1984). Victimization

and concerns for family safety also have been shown to influence residential satisfaction

negatively (Austin, Furr, and Spine, 2002; Cook, 1988; Lee, 1981; Skogan, 1990), which

can in turn lead to increased mobility.

Given that moving can be used to decrease the risk of crime, the finding that victimiza-

tion increases mobility may hardly seem surprising. A puzzle in interpreting this relation-

ship, however, is research indicating that not all groups share the same mobility behavior

when faced with crime problems. Scholars have suspected in particular that racial/ethnic

group membership is important in the locational process (South and Deane, 1993). Stud-

ies have shown that minority groups tend to live in places with higher crime rates (Alba,

Logan, and Bellair, 1994; Logan and Stults, 1999), and these differences hold after con-

trolling for between-group variations in socioeconomic characteristics (Alba, Logan, and

Bellair, 1994).

Using longitudinal data, a series of studies has demonstrated racial differences in

mobility more clearly by observing that areas with high crime rates tend to lose their

White populations disproportionately (Liska and Bellair, 1995; Liska, Logan, and Bellair,

1998; Morenoff and Sampson, 1997). Hipp (2010a) extended these results by showing

that White households change residence more frequently in response to crime percep-

tions than do households composed of Blacks and Hispanics. Given these findings, it

is reasonable to speculate that the relationship between victimization and residential

mobility may be similarly group specific. A critical issue, then, is to understand the

sources and the specific nature of racial/ethnic disparities in the victimization–moving

relationship.

EXISTING THEORIES: WHY DO RACIAL/ETHNIC DISPARITIES DEVELOP?

Because of the large racial/ethnic gap in socioeconomic status, an extensive body of

literature has identified unequal housing market conditions within the United States as a

potential source of racial/ethnic disparities in mobility (Krivo and Kaufman, 2004; Massey

and Denton, 1985; South, Crowder, and Chavez, 2005a; Xie and McDowall, 2010). Ad-

ditionally, racial/ethnic differences also may arise from two other sources: group differ-

ences in the effect of crime on fear and perceived risk (Chiricos, McEntire, and Gertz,

2001; Eitle and Taylor, 2008; Joseph, 1997; but see Callanan, 2012) and group differences

in neighborhood attachment and moving intentions (Hipp, 2010b; Woldoff, 2002; but see

Hipp, 2009). These studies, taken together, have provided reasons to expect significant

racial/ethnic differences in the effect of victimization on mobility.