Tourism, Security and Safety From Theory to Practice

Some Preliminary Evidence
As a preliminary test of some of the major determinants and to indirectly measure
the presence of the narcoeconomy, a limited cross-sectional analysis was performed
on 16 Caribbean countries for which complete data were available. The dependent
variables were taken from uniform Interpol crime rates (per 100,000 population):
murder and theft to represent violent and property crime, respectively, and the num-
ber of drug offenses to capture the influence of the narcoeconomy. The independent
variables included population density to represent anonymity, average daily visitor
density (per 1,000 population) to represent visitor presence, the unemployment rate
to measure macroeconomic conditions, the percent of the population age 0–14 years
as a surrogate indicator for the presence of juvenile offenders, and political status
(independent = 1, dependent = 0) as a proxy for crime enforcement capacity.
Independent countries were assumed to have more resources and stronger capabili-
ties. All these data were taken from the CIA 
World Factbook
except visitor density
(see Padilla and McElroy, 2004). To avoid possible distortions introduced by the
2001 terrorist attacks, since US visitors dominate the tourist economy, years chosen
ranged from 1995–2000 based on data available for each individual country.
Regression results showed none of the determinants influenced either murder or
theft rates. Two factors had a statistically significant influence on drug offenses.
According to Table 1, drug offenses were positively related to both visitor and pop-
ulation densities. According to equation (2), these two variables explain over 70%
of drug offenses in the 16 islands. This may suggest that developed tourism desti-
nations provide both anonymity and opportunity conducive to drug activity. Such
a view corresponds to the increasing harassment and drug peddling observed
across the region (WTTC, 2004b). On the other hand, neither local economic con-
ditions (as measured by unemployment) nor varying levels of enforcement (as
measured by political status) had any impact on drug offenses. Although quite
modest, these limited results indirectly point to the presence of the narcoeconomy
and the value of more extensive systematic empirical study.
Drugs = –103 + 0.632
pop.
+ 6.910 visitor density
km
2
The Growth of the Caribbean Narcoeconomy: Implications for Tourism
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