No Place Like Home: The Role of Network Connectedness and Rational Choice in the Spatial Decision-Making of Violent Extremist Offenders

This study uses the American Terrorism Study (ATS) dataset to identify the effect of network connectedness on spatial decision-making. A regression model using random effects for incident number and person identification number to account for the nested structure of the data (i.e., some incidents had multiple associated persons) indicated that compared with group-affiliated perpetrators, lone actors traveled shorter distances (B=-0.74, SE=0.19, p > 0.001). Taken together, this analysis reaffirms that network connectedness, as conceptualized here, demonstrates a statistically significant impact on the overall distance that terrorist offenders will travel. These results imply that for certain types of terrorist offender, while maximizing harm may be a common objective, it may not always be the primary consideration when choosing a specific attack location. Instead, lone actor terrorists may prefer familiar targets in comparison to collectives with more infrastructure and resources.