[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/qss/dqsswp/2005.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Did Covid-19 lead to an increase in hate crimes towards Chinese people in London?

Author

Listed:
  • Chelsea Gray

    (Metropolitan Police and University College London)

  • Kirstine Hansen

    (University College London)

Abstract
There is a long history of research that shows how world events can influence attitudes and behaviours towards whole groups of nations, religions, ethnicities and racial groups. In this paper we examine whether Covid-19, which at the time of writing was widely believed to have originated in China, negatively affected the environment for Chinese people in London leading to an increase in hate crimes towards this group relative to others. We test our hypothesis using data from the Metropolitan Police for the whole of the Metropolitan area of London. We use a difference-in-differences approach to examine what happened to hate crimes against Chinese people in London in the months before (Oct 2019-Dec 2019) and the months after the Covid-19 pandemic (Jan-Mar 2020) relative to other ethnic groups, to other crimes and to other time periods. Our methodology utilises the fact that Covid-19 came as an unexpected shock, which very quickly changed the environment for crime, and did so differentially across ethnicities. We argue that this shock is likely to negatively impact on attitudes and behaviours towards Chinese people, but have no effect on other ethnicities. Our results show that in the months after Covid-19 there was an increase in hate crimes against Chinese people in London, but this increase was not seen amongst the other ethnic groups examined, other non-hate crimes, nor in any other time period. This leads us to conclude that Covid-19 lead to an increase in hate crimes against Chinese people in London.

Suggested Citation

  • Chelsea Gray & Kirstine Hansen, 2020. "Did Covid-19 lead to an increase in hate crimes towards Chinese people in London?," DoQSS Working Papers 20-05, Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London.
    • Handle: RePEc:qss:dqsswp:2005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.ioe.ac.uk/REPEc/pdf/qsswp2005.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Matthew A. Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2004. "Media, Education and Anti-Americanism in the Muslim World," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(3), pages 117-133, Summer.
    2. Herek, G.M. & Capitanio, J.P., 1993. "Public reactions to AIDS in the United States: A second decade of stigma," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 83(4), pages 574-577.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chelsea Gray & Kirstine Hansen, 2021. "Did the first Covid-19 national lockdown lead to an increase in domestic abuse in London?," DoQSS Working Papers 21-27, Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schnellenbach, Jan & Schubert, Christian, 2015. "Behavioral political economy: A survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 395-417.
    2. Machin, Stephen & Ivandic, Ria & Kirchmaier, Tom, 2019. "Jihadi Attacks, Media and Local Hate Crime," CEPR Discussion Papers 13743, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Jetter, Michael, 2017. "Terrorism and the Media: The Effect of US Television Coverage on Al-Qaeda Attacks," IZA Discussion Papers 10708, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Jetter, Michael, 2017. "The effect of media attention on terrorism," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 32-48.
    5. Ghazaryan, Armine & Giulietti, Corrado & Wahba, Jackline, 2022. "Terror headlines and voting," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).
    6. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2008. "Trusting the Stock Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2557-2600, December.
    7. Leonardo Bursztyn & Michael Callen & Bruno Ferman & Saad Gulzar & Ali Hasanain & Noam Yuchtman, 2014. "Identifying Ideology: Experimental Evidence on Anti-Americanism in Pakistan," NBER Working Papers 20153, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Dean A. Shepherd & Holger Patzelt, 2015. "Harsh Evaluations of Entrepreneurs Who Fail: The Role of Sexual Orientation, Use of Environmentally Friendly Technologies, and Observers' Perspective Taking," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(2), pages 253-284, March.
    9. Esther Hauk & Giovanni Immordino, 2014. "Parents, Television and Cultural Change," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 124(579), pages 1040-1065, September.
    10. Yamamura, Eiji & Sabatini, Fabio, 2014. "Superstars in politics: the role of the media in the rise and success of Junichiro Koizumi," EconStor Preprints 98661, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    11. Stefano Della Vigna & Ruben Enikolopov & Vera Mironova & Maria Petrova & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2014. "Cross-Border Media and Nationalism: Evidence from Serbian Radio in Croatia," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(3), pages 103-132, July.
    12. Todd Kendall, 2009. "An empirical analysis of political activity in Hollywood," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 33(1), pages 19-47, February.
    13. Dominic Rohner, 2010. "From rags to rifles: deprivation, conflict and the welfare state," IEW - Working Papers 463, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    14. Hennighausen, Tanja, 2015. "Exposure to television and individual beliefs: Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 956-980.
    15. Davide Cantoni & Yuyu Chen & David Y. Yang & Noam Yuchtman & Y. Jane Zhang, 2017. "Curriculum and Ideology," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(2), pages 338-392.
    16. Sequeira, Sandra & Nardotto, Mattia, 2021. "Identity, Media and Consumer Behavior," CEPR Discussion Papers 15765, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Campante, Filipe R. & Hojman, Daniel A., 2013. "Media and polarization," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 79-92.
    18. Sidartha Gordon & Alessandro Riboni, 2015. "Doubts and Dogmatism in Conflict Behaviour," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 125(589), pages 1790-1817, December.
    19. Massimiliano Agovino & Maria Rosaria Carillo & Nicola Spagnolo, 2016. "The effect of news on the radicalization of public opinion towards immigration," Discussion Papers 1_2016, CRISEI, University of Naples "Parthenope", Italy.
    20. Gehlbach, Scott & Sonin, Konstantin, 2014. "Government control of the media," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 163-171.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Covid-19; hate crimes; victimisation; Chinese; London;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B41 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - Economic Methodology
    • B55 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Social Economics
    • C01 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General - - - Econometrics
    • C12 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Hypothesis Testing: General
    • C25 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Discrete Regression and Qualitative Choice Models; Discrete Regressors; Proportions; Probabilities
    • C52 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Evaluation, Validation, and Selection
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:qss:dqsswp:2005. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Dr Neus Bover Fonts (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dqioeuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.