Examining the Relationship between Alcohol Outlets and Crime in Eau Claire County, WI

Abstract

The goal of this study is to explore the geographic relationships between crime occurrences and alcohol outlets within Eau Claire County, Wisconsin through both ordinary least squares and step-wise regression. Independent variables include alcohol license density, and a suite of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2000 census data (population density, median income, unemployment, poverty, education level, and race). The dependant variable, crime density, was categorized by incident type, for example driving under the in uence, burglaries, robbery, etc., and analyzed separately against the suite of independent variables. Both independent and dependant variables were spatially aggregated to the block group level, the unit of analysis. The spatial clustering of crime occurrences within the county was also explored with hot spot analysis and spatial autocorrelation.