Key UC Contact
What We Did
Before coming to UC, I did research that measured the impact of the November 2015 terrorist attack in Paris on happiness and trust in France. Overall, I found little impact on happiness in France and some positive impact on the trust in the French government.
In February 2019, I supervised the MCom thesis research of Tyler Smith, who estimated the impact of the Berlin Truck attack on the German society and the impact of the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris on the French society. While we found some evidence that the Charlie Hebdo attack reduced average happiness in France, we found little evidence of an impact of the Berlin Truck attack.
I am currently analysing the data from four surveys done for Unisys, an information technology firm that regularly surveys people about their security concerns. They surveyed about 1000 New Zealanders in 2018, in 2019 just before and after the attack, and in 2020. After the March 15 attack in 2019, there was a huge spike in the share of New Zealanders who worried about terrorism. One year later, in 2020, however, the share of New Zealanders worrying about terrorism had dropped back to its pre-March 15 levels.
Who Was Involved
Tom Coupe, associate professor at the economics and finance department of the UC Business School
Tyler Smith, now at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand
Why It Matters
Knowing the social impact of terrorist attacks is important for evidence-based policy making in terms of how to react when a terrorist attack happens.
Learn More
- Tom Coupe (2017) The impact of terrorism on expectations, trust and happiness – the case of the November 13 attacks in Paris, France, Applied Economics Letters, 24:15, 1084-1087, DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2016.1254335
- Tyler Smith (2019), The Impact of terrorism, UC MCom Thesis
- Tyler Smith and Tom Coupe (2021), The Mental Health Cost of Terrorism: A replication of Kim and Albert Kim (Health Economics, 2018), International Journal for Re-Views in Empirical Economics, 2021-1, https://doi.org/10.18718/81781.20
Photo Caption:
Tributes for victims flowed at the University of Canterbury following the Mosque attacks on 15 March 2019
