Os impactos do medo do crime sobre o consumo de atividades de lazer no Brasil

The high crime rates that Brazil presents generate countless impacts on society. Among these impacts there are the fear of being a victim of crime and the individuals’ behavioral changes. In this sense, this study aims to assess how the fear of crime affects the consumption of individuals' leisure activities, such as going to cinemas, shopping malls, parks, sporting events, fairs, bars, restaurants and concerts. To this goal, this study uses data from the National Victimization Survey of 2012 to estimate a bivariate recursive probit, a model capable of dealing with potential endogeneity problems. The results indicate that fear reduces the probability of leisure consumption in most of the investigated activities, with emphasis on sporting events, however, an increase was observed in the consumption of activities that offer more safety for clients, such as fairs and shopping malls. The study concludes that crime brings losses of well-being that go beyond the economic losses customarily accounted for in studies of crime costs, because it cannot be ignored that fear of crime is capable of reducing the individuals’ freedom and, consequently, to bring non-observed losses to economic activities.