Date of Award

8-1-2023

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

School of Criminal Justice

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

Theodore Wilson

Committee Members

Greg Pogarsky, Justin Pickett, David Hureau

Keywords

Choice set, Criminological theory, Culture, Decision-making, Deterrence, Rational choice theory

Subject Categories

Criminology

Abstract

Models of offender decision-making are premised on a rational actor weighing the perceived options within their choice set. One will choose to engage in a behavioral option that provides them with the greatest benefits and fewest costs as compared to the other perceived options. Even though the choice set is the foundation from which offender decision-making is built, criminologists, and offender decision-making scholars specifically, have assumed the choice set without directly measuring it. Without appraising the choice set, a multi-step process of decision-making is collapsed into a single step. This precludes an understanding of the composition of the choice set, how it varies across individuals, how and why people perceive different options, and how perceiving different options impacts one’s chosen behavior. This dissertation addressed these issues and developed a more complete depiction of decision-making processes. In study one, I leveraged the fields of neuroscience and psychology in developing a validated measure of the choice set. In study two, I predicted one’s choice set and behavioral outcome from multiple theoretically-relevant neighborhood- and individual-level predictors. Study three then examined the direct influence of the choice set on one’s behavior, and the indirect effects of the aforementioned perceived neighborhood- and individual-level predictors on behavioral outcomes through one’s choice set. On the whole, I found support for my expanded theoretical model of offender decision-making. Scholars advancing the decision-making literature not only need to account for the choice set in their models, but they also must consider decision-making as a multi-phase process. This dissertation not only speaks to criminological theory broadly—and ways to expand our understanding of the process of decision-making specifically—but also to violence-reducing policy prescriptions centered on manipulating acceptable behavior.

Download

Included in

Criminology Commons

Share

COinS