Alcohol outlets, social disorganization, and robberies: Accounting for neighborhood characteristics and alcohol outlet types

• Alcohol outlets include bars, restaurants, liquor, grocery, and convenience stores.
• We model the association between total, on- and off-premise alcohols, and robbery.
• We examine the influence of different measurement of social disorganization.
• Associations depend on the social disorganization measurement.

We estimated spatially lagged regression and spatial regime models to determine if the variation in total, on-premise, and off-premise alcohol outlet1 density is related to robbery density, while controlling for direct and moderating effects of social disorganization.2 Results suggest that the relationship between alcohol outlet density and robbery density is sensitive to the measurement of social disorganization levels. Total alcohol outlet density and off-premise alcohol outlet density were significantly associated with robbery density when social disorganization variables were included separately in the models. However, when social disorganization levels were captured as a four item index, only the association between off-premise alcohol outlets and robbery density remained significant. More work is warranted in identifying the role of off-premise alcohol outlets and their characteristics in robbery incidents.