Explaining offenders’ longitudinal product-specific target selection through changes in disposability, availability, and value: an open-source intelligence web-scraping approach

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Abstract

Abstract
Objective: To address the gap in the literature and using a novel open-source intelligence web-scraping approach, this paper investigates the longitudinal relationships between availability, value, and disposability, and stealing counts
of specific makes and models of gaming consoles.
Methods: Using data from Western Australia (2012–2019) and focusing on specific makes/models of gaming consoles, the relationships between product-specific stealing counts, availability, value, and disposability were examined using time series and cross-sectional analyses.
Results: Support was found for a positive relationship between the changing disposability of specific makes/models of gaming consoles over their lifecycle with corresponding stealing counts, above and beyond changes in availability
and value. However, when these attributes were analysed statically, both disposability and value were important.
Conclusions: The results highlight the importance of measuring correlates of ‘hot products’ longitudinally to better understand ofenders’ target selection preferences over time—with important implications for theft risk assessment
and crime prevention policy and practice. These findings also provide support for the use of similar open-source intelligence web-scraping strategies as a suitable technique for capturing time-specific proxies for product-specific value
and disposability.
Original languageEnglish
Article number2
Number of pages17
JournalCrime Science
Volume11
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2022

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