Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

There’s No Place Like Home! Examining the Diffusion of Suicide Attacks Through Terrorist Group Locations

There’s No Place Like Home! Examining the Diffusion of Suicide Attacks Through Terrorist Group... Suicide attacks have been widely used by many terrorist groups since the 1980s. It cannot be ignored that Al-Qaeda has played a role in diffusing this tactic, in particular among groups that have links with Al-Qaeda. However, the decision to adopt an innovative tactic is not without risk. Its implementation may inspire potential supporters, but may also cause a backlash from government and alienation from those whose support the group may be seeking. Thus, in their decision-making, it is crucial that terrorist groups learn the repercussions of their decision to adopt such tactics. In so doing, examination of the success or otherwise of other groups that adopt an innovation and its results can provide evidence for the predictability of their decision. This research argues that terrorist groups tend to learn and be influenced more by nearby groups due to the similarity of their environment of operation. The estimation is conducted through the logit model with the original terrorist group location dataset and the findings indicate that the influence of an Al-Qaeda link in adopting the tactics of suicide attack is larger when they are geographically close. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy Springer Journals

There’s No Place Like Home! Examining the Diffusion of Suicide Attacks Through Terrorist Group Locations

Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy , Volume 11 (2) – Jan 19, 2017

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/there-s-no-place-like-home-examining-the-diffusion-of-suicide-attacks-TdplS38kuu

References (51)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Subject
Social Sciences; Human Geography; Landscape/Regional and Urban Planning; Regional/Spatial Science
ISSN
1874-463X
eISSN
1874-4621
DOI
10.1007/s12061-016-9219-x
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Suicide attacks have been widely used by many terrorist groups since the 1980s. It cannot be ignored that Al-Qaeda has played a role in diffusing this tactic, in particular among groups that have links with Al-Qaeda. However, the decision to adopt an innovative tactic is not without risk. Its implementation may inspire potential supporters, but may also cause a backlash from government and alienation from those whose support the group may be seeking. Thus, in their decision-making, it is crucial that terrorist groups learn the repercussions of their decision to adopt such tactics. In so doing, examination of the success or otherwise of other groups that adopt an innovation and its results can provide evidence for the predictability of their decision. This research argues that terrorist groups tend to learn and be influenced more by nearby groups due to the similarity of their environment of operation. The estimation is conducted through the logit model with the original terrorist group location dataset and the findings indicate that the influence of an Al-Qaeda link in adopting the tactics of suicide attack is larger when they are geographically close.

Journal

Applied Spatial Analysis and PolicySpringer Journals

Published: Jan 19, 2017

There are no references for this article.