The effects of crime on tourism: A multiple regression analysis Martín León Santiesteban 1* , Silvestre Flores Gamboa 2 1 Unidad Regional Culiacán. Universidad Autónoma de Occidente, Blvd. Lola Beltrán Km. 1.5., Culiacán, Sinaloa, México 2 Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, campus Mazatlán. Ave. Leonismo internacional S/N, Mazatlán, Sinaloa, México Corresponding Author Email: martin.leon@udo.mx Keywords: Mazatlán, violence, tourism, multiple regression ABSTRACT Safety has become one of the most decisive factors when planning and organizing a trip in the 21st century. Accordingly, different tourism industry and government organizations have established policies and mechanisms to inform and warn their citizens about the dangers or risks of traveling to other places around the world. Homicide is the most important factor for issuing these official notices. This article evaluates the effect of the number of homicides recorded from 2006-2016 on the influx of domestic and foreign (American and Canadian) visitors to a destination on the Mexican Pacific coast, using econometric techniques such as multiple linear regression. Some of the results establish a relationship between homicides and the level of tourism. Similarly, the statistical evidence shows that the number of homicides has a moderate influence on travel by foreign visitors to this destination but not on their actual stay there. 1. INTRODUCTION Travel and tourism have become a sector of great economic importance around the world in the 21 st century. Data published by the United Nations World Tourism Organization indicate that in 2016 this activity accounted for 10% of worldwide GDP, generated one out of every ten jobs, and represented 7% of world exports totaling USD 1.4 billion. Likewise, there were 1.235 billion international tourist arrivals in 2016—3.5% more than the previous year. Even though the international travel and tourism industry is growing according to the latest estimates of the UNWTO, there are regions that show inconsistent and declining trends during certain periods. This suggests that several factors converge to decrease the level of competitiveness in the tourism sector of certain nations competing for the same market. For example, according to the ranking by nation of international tourist arrivals that the UNWTO publishes annually, Mexico went from tenth to thirteenth during 2012. A year later it would drop two more rungs to fifteenth place. Despite this, it climbed back to tenth place in 2014 thanks to a 20.5% increase in visitors over the previous year. It rose to ninth place in 2015 and then to eighth place one year later. In the case of Mexico, several domestic studies link the decrease in its main tourism indicators, its deteriorating image and the negative perception of the destination with the gradual increase in the crime rate in the country. This situation resulted in a reduction in visitor flows and in various tourism and economic indicators, segments, and activities and, consequently, a decrease in competitiveness [7, 18, 21-22, 24]. In 2009, this increase in the crime rate caused an unprecedented security problem in the country, as the federal government adopted a strategy of declaring war on drug trafficking, specifically against organized crime. This unleashed a spike in various crimes, especially homicides [17]. In this national context, we examine the tourist port of Mazatlán in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, a state that is usually associated with a perennial fight by the government against cartels dedicated to all types of drug trafficking [8, 24]. Since the end of the 20 th century, drug trafficking has been identified as the number one criminal activity worldwide (Benítez, 2000). This situation, coupled with the increase in violence around the state since 2009, has caused Sinaloa to be classified as unsafe, with a number of related travel alerts. In addition, the governments of Canada and the U.S., two countries that are the top sources of tourists to this travel destination, have recommended avoiding non-essential travel to Sinaloa. Nevertheless, official figures show the dynamism of the tourism sector in Mazatlán, the main Sinaloan tourist destination, "whose natural and scenic beauty is due to its beach and natural resources" [24]. Mazatlán had 181 places of lodging registered in 2015: 138 hotels, 14 motels, 8 guest houses, 1 cabin, 6 inns, 9 trailer parks, and 18 other types of lodging such as bungalows, camping facilities, condominiums, apartments, hostels and villas. This provides a total of 11,457 rooms offered as accommodation [18]. The tourism business is clearly sensitive to external and internal factors that demotivate interest in travel, one of them being security. In this regard, this article aims to answer the following questions: Does the traveler value safety when planning travel and during travel? Do travel alerts such as the ones issued by the Canadian and U.S. governments influence travel decisions by their citizens? Is the homicide rate a relevant factor when assessing travel safety? With respect to this last question, one of the purposes of this study is to evaluate the influence of homicide rates using econometric techniques. Lectures on Modelling and Simulation 2018, pp. 26-30 26