Huabing Li

Sacred and Scared

The Deterrence Effect of Religious Sites on Theft

Working paper, 2025

Does a temple nearby make a thief hold back? Matching hundreds of thousands of theft cases in China with the locations of Buddhist temples and Taoist shrines nationwide, this paper finds that thefts committed closer to religious sites, or where such sites are more common, are less severe, and that this effect weakens in more developed regions.

Thefts around a temple: the farther away, the longer the sentence.templesentence length

Cite

Li, Huabing. 2025. “Sacred and Scared: The Deterrence Effect of Religious Sites on Theft.” Working paper.

BibTeX
@unpublished{li2025religioussites,
  author = {Li, Huabing},
  title = {{Sacred and Scared: The Deterrence Effect of Religious Sites on Theft}},
  note = {Working paper},
  year = {2025}
}