Is sexual violence related to Internet exposure?

Is sexual violence related to Internet exposure: empirical evidence from Spain Jorge Sainz Associate Professor Applied Economics Universidad Rey Juan Carlos [email_address] Joan Torrent Professor Economic and Business Universitat Oberta de Catalunya [email_address]

Motivation
Growth of Internet has affected individual behavior.
Adult content is one of the main traffic drivers.
That make it available to a larger group of users.
That affects the whole society:
Feminist: Degrades females.
Moralist: Decay of moral and traditional values.
Classical liberals: Freedom of speech is at stake and has to be defended.
Is Sexual Violence Related to Internet Exposure?

Motivation
Spain is also a special case:
Pornography was banned until 1976
Strong Catholic base
Over reaction to sexual freedom
What are we looking for?
Should pornography be banned?
Is there a substitution between online pornography and rape?
What other factors affect sexual violence in relation with online porn?

Internet sex
What is pornography?
Vatican: “real o simulated sexual acts removed from the intimacy of the parties”
Allen: “media material used to increase sexual arousal”
Seto: “depiction of sexual activity where participants are objectified”
McKelroy: “explicit artistic depiction of men and woman as sexual beings”
Ours: “sexual explicit images of individuals, regardless of their genre, intended to produce sexual arousal”
Not taking in account illegal images (violence or pedophilia)

Literature (the conservative view)
Pornography weakeness the moral values of society, eliminating its moral stabilizers
Malamuth and Check (1981):
Experiments show that users of porn become less sympathetic to sexual violence victims.
Linz et al (1993):
Government should act to protect society against immorality and low respect among individuals
Paul (2000):
It becomes more relevant if it is widely availabe.
Laydel (2004):
Web also removes inefficiencies in delivery
Reisman (2004)
Its effect is similar to those of drugs

Literature (the feminist view)
Is degrading to woman as increases the inequality between genres, empowers males with respect to females in their sexual relations.
Individual rights should be subordinated to a larger good, protect woman.
Dworking (1979) McKinnon (1995):
Pornography degrades woman, reinforcing the hostility towards females, transforming in socially acceptable behaviors that are discriminatory.
Russel (1988) Cowan and Dum (1994):
There is not direct causality, but it predisposes individuals to accept rape and brake social rules.
Bergner and Brideges (2002) Kutchinsky (1999)
Experiments are not conclusive or just conclusive on causality.

Literature (the feminist view)
Most of these results are based on lab experiments
Several problems arise:
Sample selection, etc
Linz (1989)
Short term expositions has no effect
Allen et al (1995)
Violence images have a stronger effect
McKelroy (1996)
Pornography is just a way for woman to get more information about sex.

Literature (the liberal view)
Freedom of speech is at stake, and it has to be preserved unless human suffering is at risk
Pornography is a easy target, but its prohibition will only be one step before other freedoms are restricted
Tsang (1986)
Its experience is related to own moral principles
Lottes et al (1993)
It depends on personal principals and values
Hald (2006)
Characteristics of the individuals are key to its result
Different countries have different results.

Literature (country results)
Country and society are a key factor to understand the outcome to the exposition to pornography.
Malamouth et al (2000)
If a country has larger trust between men and women it can help relations
Kutchinsky (1991)
Baltic countries and the US didn’t get affected by the increase of pornography.
Government commissioned studies in the UK, New Zealand and Australia were not conclusive either.
Kendall (2010)
Similar study to ours
There is not relation in the US

Literature (Spain)
Cánovas (1998)
Social values are in decay
Pornography is degrading for men and women
Martínez (2004)
Women are powerless with respect to Men
Pornography worsens that situation
Malen (1992)
Legal paper about the effects of pornography
Does not gives any causality

Modelling sexual violence
Emprical models are based on Becker (1968) and Ehrilch (1973) over rationality on crime
There is some debate over the issue if sexual crime is rational or not (Posner, 1993)
We are assuming that sexual violence is rational
We follow Dahl and DellaVigna (2008) in developing a model where sexual crime depends on exposure, controlling on socio economic factors

Data
One of the main problems
Data for the 50 provinces from1998 to 2006
Sexual violence
Rape, Sexual assault and Battery, Exhibition
Underreporting and conviction problems
Data on cases reported to court
Data on Internet access by EGM
Pornography consumption based on estimates by the largest provider of pornographic content
Controls obtained generally by INE based on causal factors in other felonies

Results (OLS) Is Sexual Violence Related to Internet Exposure?

Results (Panel Data) Is Sexual Violence Related to Internet Exposure?

Results (Main findings)
For rape:
Negative relation with adult content
Factors have similar results that other crimes
Substitution between rape and porn
For Assault and Exhibition
There is a positive relation
Increases the objectification of woman
Specially in youngsters

Conclusions
Internet porn has had an important effect on society
One of them is the widespread of pornography
This has had some effects into society
There is a substitution between porn and rape
But an increase violence on woman
The paper have several shortcomings
Test for robustness
Improve estimations with additional variables
Improve the model

Is sexual violence related to Internet exposure?

by i2tic on Jul 28, 2010

Accessibility

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 1

Statistics

Is sexual violence related to Internet exposure? — Presentation Transcript