College Sexual Assault and Tuition: The Hedonic Approach

College students ascribe value to many school attributes that have implicit values reflected in tuition prices. An ever-present collegiate attribute is the disamenity of crime, specifically sexual assault. Considering that college women are sexually assaulted disproportionately more than men, I examine the impact that college sexual assault has on willingness to pay at colleges categorized as female dominant, women’s, or male dominant. I combine data from the U.S. Department of Education, U.S. News and World Report, Women’s College Coalition, and Bureau of Labor Statistics to create a panel dataset of 535 American 4-year colleges, spanning from 2010 to 2018. Using a partially first differenced log-linear model, I find that colleges of certain categories and liberal arts classifications face economic repercussions for heightened risk of sexual assault, while other colleges face economic benefits. I also find that some colleges face no economic repercussion for increased risk of sexual assault, potentially because students value the prestige of these colleges more than their own safety.