Intrusion Route as an Analysis Unit for Residential Burglars’ Target Assessment

The purpose of this study is to determine whether a house's intrusion route is a more useful analysis unit for explaining residential burglars' choice than the house as a whole. Also, we investigated whether a predictive model derived separately from the selected intrusion route better describes burglary decisions than a model derived from the entire response at once. Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to assess whether the participants' evaluations were influenced by the general state of the house or that of the chosen intrusion route. Additionally, two regression studies were undertaken to investigate the effect of the intrusion route chosen on the derivation of regression models. The results indicated that the targeted house is evaluated primarily on the basis of environmental factors associated with the selected intrusion route, rather than on the basis of all environmental elements throughout the house. This result infers that the intrusion route should be treated as an analysis unit to obtain more accurate results for environmental factors affecting burglar's target selection.