The impact of crime on urban park visitation patterns: A longitudinal analysis in Austin, Texas

Abstract

Urban parks generate multiple health and social benefits but crime can undercut these gains by deterring visits. Existing evidence rarely traces how specific crime types and timing influence daily foot-traffic, or whether impacts differ by neighbourhood socio-demographics. This study quantifies the short, medium, and long-term effects of family violence, non-family violent and non-family non-violent crime on park visitation in a mid-sized, data-rich city. Police NIBRS incidents from 2019 were spatially joined to SafeGraph and Advan mobile-device visits for 208 Austin, Texas parks using a 0.25-mile buffer. Daily visitor counts were regressed on 7, 30, and 60-day crime lags with park-by-date fixed effects, weather, and amenity controls. Interaction terms tested moderation by block-level income, race, and age. We explored heterogeneity descriptively but focus the modeling on offense-specific, time-windowed associations. Each additional non-family violent incident in the prior week predicts 1.5 fewer visitors per park-day. The 30-day violent-crime coefficient is approximately 2 visitors, implying a persistent though modest decline; the 60-day effect is not significant. Family violence and non-violent offenses show no aggregate effects across windows. Collectively, the results provide offense‑specific, time‑sensitive evidence on when violent‑crime exposure most depresses park use, introduce a replicable park‑day lagged crime‑exposure measure transferable to other cities, and offer practice‑ready guidance for targeting operational responses and inclusive programming during the short‑to‑medium windows when impacts are strongest.