The Spatial And Temporal Evolution Of Crime Of Selling Counterfeit Drugs In China And Its Influencing Factors

Counterfeit drug crimes belong to the economic crimes involving people’s livelihood.It’s a new crime derived from the development of the social and commodity economy,with the doubly harmfulness in the life,health,and property safety of the public,as well as the economic management order and social stability of our country.In recent years,the nationwide crimes of counterfeit drugs are still in a severe situation.Still,there is less research on it in academic circles,and it is even a new direction that has not been tapped in the study of crime geography,which forms a considerable contrast with the urgent reality.This study tries to answer the critical topics of characteristics,spatial and temporal patterns,urban patterns,and influencing factors of counterfeit drug crimes based on a criminal geography perspective,using data from counterfeit drug crimes sentencing instruments.According to the existing literature,the following deficiencies still exist in the current research on counterfeit drug crimes.(1)Researchers on counterfeit drug crimes only focus on the number of counterfeit drug crimes in each province and analyze their differences,while not revealing the spatial and temporal evolutionary trends of counterfeit drug crimes,especially their evolutionary trends at the municipal scale being.(2)Most of the domestic research is limited to empirical models,theoretical analyses,and practical recommendations,and no research has been found to explore the influencing factors of counterfeit drug crimes in China in a quantitative way,thus the quantitative modeling of the influencing factors of counterfeit drug crimes still needs to be explored.Given this,in response to the research mentioned above regarding deficiencies of counterfeit drug crimes,this study takes the spatio-temporal evolution pattern of counterfeit drug crimes and its influencing factors as the main line.Further,it deepens them into the considerations of "the spatio-temporal pattern evolution and the urban pattern" and "influencing factors and its spatio-temporal smoothness".This study combines multi-source spatio-temporal big data from 2014 to 2019,such as the verdict instrument data of counterfeit drug crimes,the socio-economic data,the air quality index data,and the searching index data from Baidu,and uses methods such as Thiel index,Herfindahl index,Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis,SoftDTW,K-medoids clustering,Spatial Error Model with panel data,and Geographically and Temporally Weighted Regression with proximity unit error to explore the spatio-temporal evolution characteristics,urban patterns and their influencing factors of counterfeit drug crimes,in order to bridge the gap in the study of counterfeit drug crimes.Overall,this study finds the following results.(1)Counterfeit drug crimes in China are mainly distributed in cities east of the "Hu Line" with a phased trend.In the first phase(2014-2015),the number of crimes in Chinese cities and the regional differences increased,while in the second phase(2016 onwards),the number of counterfeit drug crimes in Chinese cities decreased and the regional differences weakened.In the early stage,there was a "clustered" distribution pattern of single or double nuclei.Later counterfeit drug crimes shifted to cities in the northern,central,and northeastern directions evolving into a "diffuse" distribution pattern of multiple nuclei.A clear "herringbone" beltshaped distribution characteristics were finally formed.In addition,Chinese counterfeit drug crimes in all cities show obvious characteristics of change,that is,the location of cities showing a decline in crimes is relatively stable and there is a clear polarization,while the location of cities showing an increase in crimes is more volatile and variable,and in different years shows different risks of counterfeit drug crimes potential.(2)The urban patterns of counterfeit drug crimes can be divided into four categories: the ascending,the descending,the fluctuating,and the lowest,and there are apparent differences in the number and distribution of each urban pattern.Among them,the number of ascending cities is small,and their distribution is relatively scattered in the southern region,while the distribution is relatively concentrated in the northern part.The fluctuating cities are distributed on the periphery of cities with a single nucleus of counterfeit drug crimes or cities with more counterfeit drug crimes.They are easily influenced by the neighboring cities and produce large fluctuations.The number of descending cities is small and mainly concentrated in Guangdong,and the lowest cities are the largest number and most widely distributed.In general,the changes of counterfeit drug crimes in China largely depend on the changes of the ascending,the descending,and the fluctuating cities.For example,the ascending cities mainly influence the fluctuations and shifts of the spatial and temporal patterns of counterfeit drug crimes,the descending cities mainly influence the decreasing changes of the temporal order quantity of counterfeit drug crimes,while the fluctuating cities exert influence on the number of counterfeit drug crimes and their spatial and temporal patterns together with ascending and descending cities.(3)The theory in Environmental criminology can better explain the formation mechanism of counterfeit drug crimes.Among them,the ability to pay,the intended audience,medical resources,commercial ports,education level,and the rule of law environment are robust and significant to the spatial and temporal patterns of counterfeit drug crimes in China,while air pollution and medical resources are not robust.The ability to pay and the intended audience represent the crime benefits of counterfeit drug merchants as facilitators of counterfeit drug crimes.At the same time,cost and risk elements such as ports of commerce,education level,and the rule of law environment are inhibitors of counterfeit drug crimes.In addition,most of the explanatory variables are spatially and temporally non-stationary,with variables such as regional ability to pay,audience population,air pollution,medical resources,ports of communication,and spatial spillover effects of non-observed terms not being stable in time and space.In contrast,variables such as education level and rule of law environment are relatively stable in time and space.Finally,based on the audience,medical resources,education level,and the rule of law environment,this study proposes some targeted prevention and control recommendations in terms of breaking away from drug dependence,curbing the demand for non-essential special drugs,guiding the correct drug purchase channels,raising the awareness of purchasers to take precautions,and improving the overall medical environment,education and culture,the rule of law environment and other livelihood bases in cities.