The Effects of a Place-Based Intervention on Resident Reporting of Crime and Service Needs: A Frontier Matching Approach

Prior research has found that reporting of crime incidents and service needs remain low in many U.S. cities. This study employs a matching strategy using observational data from a large public repository to generate effect estimates of a place-based intervention in Buffalo, NY on crime incidents and calls for service. Matching is conducted using matching frontier with an energy-distance balance metric, which allows for fine managing of the balance-precision tradeoff. Findings on a sample of 77,955 households indicate that treated households were more likely to report drug-related crimes and blight-related incidents compared to untreated households. There was no evidence of differences in reporting of other crime or service needs between treated and untreated households. This research fills an important gap in the literature by not only investigating the impact of a place-based intervention on residents’ reporting behavior but also presenting findings on under-studied outcome subtypes.