Social Strain or Self-Control?: An Empirical Test of Explanations of Employee Theft

• In Event: Offender Pathways: Sentencing, Adjustment, and Perceptions of Powerful Crime

Abstract

Research on crime and deviant behavior has revisited theoretical questions raised by white-collar offending in relation to conventional criminological theory. Since most of these offenses go unreported to the police, particularly those committed in the workplace, studying occupational crime presents significant challenges for researchers. Occupational crime, which occurs within organizations and falls under offense-based definitions of white-collar crime, remains difficult to measure using official crime statistics. To address this gap, we use self-reported crime data to estimate a beta-binomial regression model of employee theft. This model examines the theoretical predictors of white-collar criminality among casino employees in Macau, focusing on whether Agnew’s general strain theory or Gottfredson and Hirschi’s self-control theory generalizes to an East Asian sample. Our findings support both general theories of crime. Specifically, a measure of economic strain and a behavioral indicator of low self-control were each independently and significantly associated with a criminal variety scale of employee theft, even after controlling for criminal opportunity, work commitment, and respondents’ demographic characteristics. These results suggest that Agnew’s general strain theory and Gottfredson and Hirschi’s self-control theory apply not only to white-collar offending but also to crime and deviant behavior in an East Asian context.

Authors

• Christopher Contreras, University of Massachusetts Boston

• Henry N. Pontell, John Jay College of Criminal Justice / University of California, Irvine

• Jianhong Liu, Macau University of Science and Technology