When does a provocation demand a violent response? A randomized scenario study of the code of the street

Abstract Elijah Anderson’s seminal work on the “Code of the Street” details how individuals use violence to defend and gain respect in violent neighborhoods. We provide his account with choice-theoretic foundations to derive hypotheses on how individuals’ willingness to use violence depends on their street code beliefs, the strength of provocation, and their exposure to violence in their neighborhoods. Using data from a survey of 10th graders in 46 schools across five neighboring cities in Germany, we examine violent intentions in a neighborhood-based scenario that randomly varied the strength of provocation. To measure the level of violence in respondents’ neighborhoods, we link geo-coded police-recorded data. While provocation strength generally increases violent intentions, adolescents who reject the street code and live in low-violence neighborhoods report no violent intentions even when strongly provoked. Conversely, among adolescents with strong street code beliefs, responses to provocations vary depending on their residential environment.