Victim Travel–To-Crime Areas: The Experience from Nigerian International Tourist Attraction Site

Abstract

The study examined the socio-economic characteristics and types of criminal activities experienced by tourists during festive and non-festive period at Ikogusi Warm and Cold Spring, Nigeria. Data for the study were collected through administration of questionnaire. Systematic sampling method was adopted in selecting respondents for this study. It was revealed that 24% of the tourists were female and 59.3% were between 19-36 years. Furthermore, approximately 89% of the tourists were from places within Nigeria while the remaining 12% came from places outside Nigeria. Rate of criminal activities was measured through an index of 5 and tagged “Crime Occurrence Index” reveled pick pocketing as crime type with highest magnitude of threat (COI= 4.86 and 4.35) during festive and non-festive period respectively. Origin of tourist (β=0.781) was found to have highest correlation value with prevailing crime. Next to this was gender of the tourists (β=0.781). This further revealed that the odd of a woman being a victim of prevalent crime was approximately 4(3.61) times higher than that of a man while the odds of non-Nigerian being a victim of the prevalent crime was approximately 5(5.41) times higher than those who were Nigerians. Similarly, that of Nigerian who came from outside the locality was approximately 2(2.35) times that of those who resides within this locality. The study concluded therefore that rate of victimization differ significantly as reflected by the socio-economic characteristics of the tourists and that the approach to make tourists feel more secured should be guided by those variation.