Citation

Pfeiffer CP. Behav. Sci. Terrorism Polit. Aggres. 2012; 4(3): 212-228.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/19434472.2011.594629

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The symbiotic relationship between terrorism and the media is widely taken as self-evident; theoretical analysis from an economic perspective is rare. In this paper, a game-theoretic model with two players - the media and a terrorist organization - is developed and then extended to multiple terrorist groups. The number of terrorist groups is first modeled exogenously and then, in a market entry game, endogenously. It can be shown that media attention not only encourages terrorism, but also has a stabilizing effect. With increasing terrorism and constant media preferences, the probability that a single terrorist incident is reported on diminishes, reducing the expected payoff from a successful terrorist attack. Hence, terrorist attacks of a single group are declining in the overall number of terrorist groups. Predictions are made about which circumstances encourage market entry of terrorist groups. It is found that religiousness, popular support and, inversely, the national income of the base country, will, ceteris paribus, lead to an increase in potential terrorist groups engaging in terrorism.