Does income inequality lead to more environmental crime in Italy

Our work intends to explore the relationship between economic inequality and environmental crime. While the relationship between economic performance and criminal outcomes in general has been widely studied, there is no economic empirical evidence, to the best of our knowledge, on the relationship between economic inequality and environmental crime. Thus, the main motivation behind this study is to explore whether income inequality, which is found to be relevant in the economic literature on general crime, could be also pertinent to the study of environmental crime in Italy. It is hoped that our findings could provide a relevant contribution to the economic literature on environmental crime, assisting policymakers in disentangling the economic drivers of environmental crimes, thereby enhancing efforts to meet environmental targets.