Societal Responses to Endemic Terror: Evidence from Driving Behavior in Israel

In this article, using data on traffic volume and fatal accident rates in Israel from 2001 to 2004–a period spanning much of the Second Intifada–we examine the population-level responses to endemic terror to uncover whether societies become habituated so that the response weakens following repeated attacks or whether they become increasingly sensitized so subsequent attacks have a greater impact. Our analysis, using distributed-lag time series models, supports earlier findings while highlighting the persistence of the response to terror attacks even several years into the violence. There are, however, signs that the reaction to terror has accelerated. This shift, which is not naturally seen as evidence for either habituation or sensitization, is suggestive of social learning of norms over time.