Video Games Contribute to Crime Rate Reduction

Video games reduce crime rates because they keep potential criminal offenders enthralled to their computer or gaming console. Thereby less time remains to commit crimes. These are the findings of a joint study conducted by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim, the Baylor University and the University of Texas at Arlington. The study analyses the effect of violent and non-violent video games on the number of violent and non-violent crimes in the United States.

Paradoxically, violent video games may reduce violence by drawing potentially violent criminals to the screen and shifting these individuals out of alternative activities where violence is more likely to occur. On the other hand, numerous psychology studies suggest that violent video games increase the aggressiveness of individuals. Especially the gradual increase in the willingness to use violence produced by violent video games, which can cause severe harm to individuals and the society, should not be underestimated.

Due to these findings political decision-makers regard playing violent video games as a contributing factor to aggressive behaviour of teenagers and young adults. Therefore, regulating and even prohibiting violent content in video games is frequently considered a possibility. The findings linking gameplay to an increase in aggression are mainly based on psychological laboratory experiments. However, these experiments do neither consider the intense usage of these games by relatively violence-prone people nor the resulting time use effect. This incapacitation effect prevents gamers from engaging in other violent activities during the time spent playing video games.

The study based on data from the United States very distinctly shows these two contrasting effects. On the one hand, the findings suggest an increased aggressiveness on the part of the gamers. Video games can be related to a rise in the number of violent crimes. On the other hand, the study also shows that gamers voluntarily spend a considerable proportion of their time playing video games, which leads to a reduction of violent crimes. In the United States, this time use effect dominates the aggression-promoting effect. Therefore, playing both violent and non-violent video games leads to a decrease in criminal acts.

“The effects of playing video games include both the promotion of aggressive behaviour and a time use effect restricting the time for practicing aggressive behaviour,” says Benjamin Engelstätter, researcher at ZEW. “Our findings for the United States show that the time use effect on players is stronger than the aggression-promoting effect. Therefore, possible regulations of violent content in video games should be carefully designed. They could lead to a reduction in long-term aggressive tendencies. However, in the short-term, they would probably lead to a rise in crime rates as a number of gamers would spend less time playing video games that might have lost their appeal due to the regulations.”

The study is based on a data set including different data sources, providing weekly observations for the United States over a period of four years from 2005 until 2008. The National Incident Based Reporting System gathers the number of criminal incidents and detailed information on every incident. Additionally, data from the VGChartz-System was used, which provides information on the sales of video console games. The measure of violent videogame content stems from the non-profit body Entertainment Software Rating Board. Review data comes from the GameSpot website providing expert reviews for all games in the data set, including well-known first person shooter games such as Battlefield or Modern Warfare.

For further information please contact

Prof. Dr. Irene Bertschek, Phone +49 621/1235-178, E-mail bertschek@zew.de

Benjamin Engelstätter, Phone +49 621/1235-134, E-mail engelstaetter@zew.de