Sidebottom, Aiden;
Agar, Iain;
Kurland, Justin;
(2023)
Do increases in the price of fuel increase levels of fuel theft? Evidence from England and Wales.
Crime Science
, 12
, Article 7. 10.1186/s40163-023-00182-7.
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Abstract
Fuel prices have increased sharply over the past year. In this study we test the hypothesis that increases in the price of fuel are associated with increases in motorists filling their fuel tank and driving off without paying. We use weekly crime data from six police forces in England and Wales for the period January 2018 to July 2022, combined with regional data on the number of fuel sales and average fuel prices. Our results demonstrate an overall weak price-theft relationship for the 238 week study period, less so than in previous studies. However, we find strong evidence that the recent spike in fuel prices was associated with elevated levels of fuel theft. The implications of our findings for future research and crime prevention are discussed.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Do increases in the price of fuel increase levels of fuel theft? Evidence from England and Wales |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1186/s40163-023-00182-7 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-023-00182-7 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
| Keywords: | Bilking, Drive-ofs, Fuel, Petrol, Price, Theft |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Security and Crime Science |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10201139 |
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