Predictors of successful terrorism incidents.

The research on predictors of successful terrorism incidents is scarce and warrants more scholarly attention to minimize the number of successful terrorist attacks. This study examined whether suicide attack, region, weapon type, attack type, target/victim type, and type of terrorist organization are predictors of successful terrorism incidents. The data contained global terrorism incidents that occurred between 1970 and 2019 and were obtained from the Global Terrorism Database (N = 154,289). The results of multivariate analyses obtained from the binary logistic regression test showed that successful terrorism is less likely to occur in North America but, when such attacks do occur, they are more likely to involve facility/infrastructure as the attack type and a firearm as the weapon type; target private citizens and property; and be committed by religious terrorist organizations. The findings of the study and its policy implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]