Relationship between the built environment and theft cases in star hotels in ZG central city

Chunxia ZHANG, Suhong ZHOU, Lin LIU, Luzi XIAO, 1. Department of Management Engineering, Guangdong Engineering Polytechnic, Guangzhou 510520, China
2020 地理科学进展  
Abstract: As a ticklish social problem, crime committed in hotels has been concerned by both Chinese and Western scholars. Theft is one of the most frequent crime types occurred in hotels, especially in star hotels. Previous studies on influencing factors of hotel theft cases mainly focused on star hotel and personal attributes of victims at the micro level from the perspective of sociology, rather than considering the built environmental factors at the macro level from the perspective of
more » ... phy. Using the data on the star hotels with theft cases in 2012-2014 in ZG central city obtained from Municipal Public Security Bureau, this study examined the spatialtemporal characteristics of these hotels. Then the environmental indicators within 500 m around the hotels were examined and the negative binomial regression method was used to make a systematic analysis on the factors affecting the theft of different types of star hotels in various time periods. The main results are as follows: 1) The spatial-temporal distribution of star hotels showed obvious agglomeration features. Generally, most of the main hotspots in the high incidence areas of hotel theft were time invariant, all of them are highlighted near the old city central business district, the eastern extension of the main road and the railway station. However, the spatial distribution of secondary hotspots was time-varying. 2) The overall model analysis indicates that the improvement of the service level was the most effective way to reduce the theft cases of all star hotels. The surrounding property and community points of interest (POIs) will significantly increase the opportunity for all star hotels to be stolen, while road intersections play a significant regulatory role in the theft of all star hotels. 3) The results of the sub models demonstrate that the effect of service level on the theft of three-star and five-star hotels is significant, and the effect of road intersection on the theft of four-star hotels often used by guests of business travel is stronger; the number of POIs has more obvious effect on three-star and four-star hotels. Largescale retail business center can significantly increase the number of theft cases in hotels in the peak season and the weekend, and the number of road intersections is significant for the monitoring of stolen risk of the star hotels in the off-season period and the working days. These results have shown that the built environment played a significant role in affecting the opportunity and cost of hotel theft. The results verify the applicability of the daily activity theory in the study of hotel crimes in large cities in China, and expand the research results of crime geography in the direction of star hotel theft, which has a guiding effect for the prevention of hotel theft.
doi:10.18306/dlkxjz.2020.05.011 fatcat:vdujo22lnnevlgre7fdxle5oba