© Universität Bielefeld
Soziologie
Veröffentlicht am
3. Januar 2022
Kategorie:
Soziologie
New publication by Sebastian Sattler and Carsten Sauer in Social Science Research
New publication by Sebastian Sattler and Carsten Sauer in Social Science Research LINK.
Sattler, S., van Veen, F., Mehlkop, G., Hasselhorn, F., Sauer, C. (2021, online first): An Experimental Test of Situational Action Theory of Crime Causation: Investigating the Perception-Choice Process. Social Science Research.
Abstract
Criminal
action, according to Situational Action Theory (SAT), is a two-stage
process consisting of a perception and a choice process. This
Germany-wide vignette study (N = 3,088,
participants recruited offline) provides an explicit and extensive test
of these processes. It experimentally varied the informal moral
context, deterrence (sanctions and detection risk), and possible gains
of selling prescription drugs illegally in a 2x2x2×2 between-subject
design. Personal morality and self-control were measured. Double-hurdle
models show that personal morality served as a filter for the perception
of criminal alternatives. Law-conforming moral context information,
high self-control, and deterrence lowered the crime willingness.
Thereby, this study underlines the usefulness of an explicit modeling of
the dual-process of criminal conduct, in which certain antecedents only
play a role in a certain process. While several findings corroborate
assumptions from SAT, an influence of the informal moral context was
only found in the choice process, not in the perception process.