Date: Wednesday November 20, 2024

Time: 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM

Location: LIB 1119

Speakers:

Pinghan Liang, Professor in the School of Government, Sun Yat-sen University

Xijie Li, Doctoral student in the School of Government, Sun Yat-sen University

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of video surveillance system on school safety in China. We constructed the information about the installation of school video surveillance equipment from public procurement contracts. We used the RoBERTa model to establish a unique data on school safety in China, based on the public appeals and complaints about school safety from the Local Leaders Messenger Board. Employing a Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood model, we found that a one hundred RMB increase in video surveillance equipment per student is associated with a 2-percentage increase in education-related complaint rate. To address the endogeneity challenge, we used the cumulative number of non-school CCTV procurement contracts as an instrumental variable. Heterogeneity analysis revealed that the impact is lower in cities with higher government priority on education. The presence of video surveillance increases the speed of government response to school safety complaints. This paper indicates that video surveillance equipment keeps visual evidence of bad behaviors in campus, and facilitates parents to request higher-level intervention, which could deter school violence in the long term.

Bio

Pinghan Liang, Professor in the School of Government, Sun Yat-sen University. He receives PhD in Economics from the Universitat of Autonoma de Barcelona. He was the Swire Visiting Scholar in the University of Oxford, and visiting scholar in the Northwestern University. His research interest includes Public Economics, Political Economy, Behavioral Economics, state-business relations, social impact of digital technology, etc.

Xijie Li, Doctoral student in the School of Government, Sun Yat-sen University. Her research interests are in digital governance and state-business relations.

Yuchen Guo, Doctoral student in the School of Government, Sun Yat-sen University