Past Behavior as a Measure of Actual Future Behavior: An Unresolved Issue in Perceptual Deterrence Research

Abstract

Beginning with three seminal studies in the 1960s,' deterrence theory research has continued to refine measures of certainty and severity of punishment and involvement in illegal behavior. Because deterrence is a perceptual process, aggregate-level studies focusing on official measures of threat of legal punishment and involvement in illegal behavior generally have been rejected in favor of individual-level research, thereby allowing for measures of perceptions of certainty and severity of punishment and self-reported illegal behavior.2 In the 1970s and early 1980s, most research on individual perceptions of threat of legal punishment was cross-sectional in design.3 A majority of these studies, which typically employed past