Spatial Variations of the Broken Emotion Conjecture

Abstract

Crime is not randomly distributed but tends to occur in specific spatial clusters. The literature has published many theories to explain its underlying causes. In recent years, scholars have increasingly leveraged social media big data to enrich our understanding of crime. Among these efforts is the Broken Emotion Conjecture, which offers a novel perspective on the connection between crime and emotion. However, how this connection varies among crime types and across the geographic space remains unclear. In this study, we investigate the spatial variations of the Broken Emotion Conjecture by analyzing emotion of residents and visitors, and their associations with assaults, burglaries, robberies, and thefts in Cincinnati, OH. Through spatial statistical analyses, we find that emotional states of residents and visitors have distinct effects on crime. Specifically, after controlling for key socioeconomic and land-use factors, we observed that collective negative emotion among residents is associated with a higher likelihood of burglaries; while collective negative emotion among visitors correlated with increased risk of assault, burglary, and robbery. Notably, we found no statistically significant impact of either residents’ or visitors' negative emotion on thefts. These findings align with established criminological and psychological theories, but provide a more nuanced interpretation of the connection between emotion and crime. Our study contributes to the growing body of research on the crime-emotion relationship, supports the development of an ambient population based emotion research within criminology, and provides practical policy implications.