Toward a Unified Ecology of Crime Theory: An Exploration of Interactions Between Criminal Impetus and Opportunity in a Multi-Level, Hierarchical Analysis.

Social disorganization theory posits that patterns of crime emerge because neighborhood characteristics contribute to differences in propensity for criminality. Routine activity theory asserts that patterns emerge due to contextual differences in opportunity for criminal acts. Given that a criminal event requires both a motivated offender and an opportunity, scholars have recognized that these two independent traditions are complementary in nature. Spatial characteristics associated with the creation of criminality or opportunity may both be independently associated with the distribution of criminal events, but when there is a simultaneous geographic occurrence an interaction may occur whereby there is a multiplicative, rather than an additive, effect. This paper contributes to the growing body of literature that seeks to integrate these two theories on the basis of empirical interaction effects, but makes a unique contribution in that it uses hierarchical linear analysis in the context of a much smaller level-one unit. It is believed that, as a direct result of this methodological improvement, this study more strongly supports an interaction-based integration. Both micro- and macro-level social contexts are found to make significant contributions, and the influence of micro-level characteristics are found to be contingent on the macro-level environments in which they are nested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]