DP5293 Individual Protection Against Property Crime: Decomposing the Effects of Protection Observability
We revisit the question of the efficiency of individual decisions to be protected against crime for the cases of both observable and unobservable protection. We obtain that observable protection is unambiguously associated with a negative externality and that at the individual level, it has a deterrence effect but no payoff reduction effect. Unobservable protection has a global deterrence effect and is associated with a private payoff reduction effect but no private deterrence effect. A decrease in the global crime payoff is detrimental to a victim if protection is observable, while it is beneficial with unobservable protection. While protection has a positive diversion effect when observable, it has the equivalent of a negative diversion effect when unobservable.
