Seasonality of incident types in transport crime – Analysis of TAPA statistics

Abstract

This paper examines weekly and annual seasonality in incident categories to find patterns and trends in transport crime globally, concerning the value of stolen goods, incident frequency and incident category. Secondary data is utilized to analyse a contemporary challenge in logistics and supply chain research, namely theft and robbery of goods during shipment. The research is based on the TAPA global IIS transport-related crime database. Incident frequencies and mean values are analysed primarily with chi-square tests and analyses of variance (ANOVAs). The results are analysed and discussed within a frame of reference consisting of theories from logistics and criminology. The main conclusion is that there is an annual as well as a weekly seasonality of most incident categories, but the patterns vary among incident categories. The results are primarily limited by the content and classification within the TAPA IIS database.