Deane G, Messner S F, McGeever K, Stucky T D, Kubrin C E
G. Deane . S. F. Messner . K. McGeever; Department of Sociology, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA, e-mail:
J Quant Criminol. 2008 Dec 1;24(4):363-380. doi: 10.1007/s10940-008-9049-3.
The current study examines spatial dependence in robbery rates for a sample of 1,056 cities with 25,000 or more residents over the 2000-2003 period. Although commonly considered in some macro-level research, spatial processes have not been examined in relation to city-level variation in robbery. The results of our regression analyses suggest that city robbery rates are not spatially independent. We find that spatial dependence is better accounted for by spatial error models than by spatial lag models. Further exploration of various spatial weights matrices indicates that robbery rates of cities within the same state are related to robbery rates of other cities within the same state, regardless of their proximity. Our analyses illustrate how systematic inquiry into spatial processes can alert researchers to important omitted variable biases and identify intriguing problems for future research.
本研究考察了2000 - 2003年期间居民人数在25000人及以上的1056个城市样本中抢劫率的空间依赖性。尽管在一些宏观层面的研究中经常会考虑空间因素，但尚未针对城市层面抢劫案的变化对空间过程进行研究。我们的回归分析结果表明，城市抢劫率并非空间独立。我们发现，空间误差模型比空间滞后模型能更好地解释空间依赖性。对各种空间权重矩阵的进一步探索表明，同一州内城市的抢劫率与该州内其他城市的抢劫率相关，无论它们之间的距离远近。我们的分析说明了对空间过程进行系统探究如何能提醒研究人员注意重要的遗漏变量偏差，并为未来研究识别有趣的问题。
