Suchergebnisse

Eine Sondererhebung 2007 des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels für Deutschland ergab: Die Deutschen machen sich häufiger große Sorgen um den globalen Terrorismus als um ihre eigene wirtschaftliche Situation. Besonders ältere Menschen und Frauen scheinen dazu zu neigen, sich große Sorgen zu machen. Aber auch der Bildungsgrad spielt eine wichtige Rolle: Befragte mit Abitur machen sich signifikant seltener große Sorgen um den globalen Terrorismus. Diese Befunde sind wichtig, weil Emotionen und Sorgen Wahrnehmung und Verhalten stark beeinflussen und sowohl politische als auch ökonomische Folgen nach sich ziehen können. Die Untersuchung von Faktoren, die das Ausmaß der Sorgen beeinflussen, ist daher von großer Bedeutung für den politischen Umgang mit Terrorismus.

We investigate whether differences in terrorism risk are mirrored on terrorism risk concern across European countries for the period 2003-2007. We find that the average propensity for terrorism risk concern is indeed affected by actual risk levels. Furthermore, country and individual heterogeneity contribute substantially to the variation of observed risk concern. According to our findings, males, singles and individuals with white collar jobs are less likely to mention terrorism as one of the most pressing issues their country faces. In contrast, political positioning towards the right end of the spectrum and living in rural areas make it more likely to be concerned about terrorism. As far as competing risks are concerned, we find that the likelihood terrorism is mentioned increases when competing risks' drivers also increase such as taxation, inflation, unemployment and poverty risk at work. In contrast, terrorism is less likely to be mentioned when the determinants of crime, immigration rates, housing costs and pensions are higher. Finally, based on the Bayesian framework we also examine the formation of terrorism risk perceptions, and decompose the observed country level time series of terrorism activity into a long and a short run component. We conclude that the observed risk concern variation is mostly explained by the trend part of terrorism activity countries face, although cyclical variations are also important.

Both crime and terrorism impose costs onto society through the channels of fear and worry. Identifying and targeting groups which are especially affected by worries might be one way to reduce the total costs of these two types of insecurity. However, compared to the drivers of the fear of crime, the determinants of concerns regarding global terrorism are less well known. Using nationally representative survey data, we analyse and compare the individual determinants of concern about global terrorism and crime, and show that worries about terrorism are driven by similar determinants as those about crime, which could have important policy implications. We furthermore provide an insight into the structure of the determinants of concerns regarding other public and private goods.