It probably depends on the culture. IIRC in the US you only have a 20% chance of being seriously injured if you cooperate with a robber. I wouldn't be surprised if the odds were different in other countries.
Criminology by Larry J. Siegel disagrees, asserting that while it decreases your chance of being robbed, it increases your chances of being injured or killed.
edit: Zimring and Zuehl's study shows that robberies with "active noncooperation" (refusal to hand over money, attempt to flee, resistence with force) had a death rate fourteen higher than those where the victims cooperated, and that victims who simply denied having money (but did not otherwise resist) had a death rate twice as high as those who cooperate.
However, in the same paragraph it cites Gary Kleck on the use of guns, and it says that potential victims should be encouraged to fight back, and that resistance with a gun is significantly better than the other forms of resistance (and a conclusion that it is better to fight than to flee).
It's a surprising conclusion for me (I'm mostly anti-guns, though I'd prefer some other option like, say, tasers, to be available for self-defense)
Kleck's advice is for rape victims, not robbery victims.
The first citations I can find in google scholar indicate that the odds of being killed during/after rape is roughly two orders of magnitude higher than the odds of being killed during/after a "cooperative" robbery, thus the differing calculus.
I found the opposite on his abstract (though Googling around says that his claims are often disputed):
"This study assessed the impact of sixteen types of victim self protection (SP) actions on three types of outcomes of criminal incidents: first, whether the incident resulted in property loss, second, whether it resulted in injury to the victim, and, third, whether it resulted in serious injury. Data on 27,595 personal contact crime incidents recorded in the National Crime Victimization Survey for the 1992 to 2001 decade were used to estimate multivariate models of crime outcomes with logistic regression. Results indicated that self-protection in general, both forceful and non forceful, reduced the likelihood of property loss and injury, compared to nonresistance. A variety of mostly forceful tactics, including resistance with a gun, appeared to have the strongest effects in reducing the risk of injury, though some of the findings were unstable due to the small numbers of sample cases. The appearance, in past research, of resistance contributing to injury was found to be largely attributable to confusion concerning the sequence of SP actions and injury. In crimes where both occurred, injury followed SP in only 10 percent of the incidents. Combined with the fact that injuries following resistance are almost always relatively minor, victim resistance appears to be generally a wise course of action."
good point :) However it makes a slight assumption that you still have 95% chance of winning if you hand over the wallet and are then attacked.
This is probably not the case as the attacker gains a reasonable advantage by being first (maybe only 2 or 3% in this case)
I also assumed the 50% was referring to the percentage chance of being actually harmed rather than having to fight. In which case your stats do break down.
while I dont know what I would do in this situation, I know I wouldnt ever call someone who handed money over to someone who threatened them with a knife a "coward"
There's more here than the calculus of survival. Consider your right to life and liberty. To surrender that is to become a victim. Some would honestly rather risk it than enter into that class. Its a personal choice. Americans used to be famous for their backbone. This thread leaves me wondering.
Police are for cleaning up crime scenes after the fact and trying to catch the people responsible. There's almost nothing they can do before a crime is committed. Even if a crime is in progress, they're more interested in protecting their own skin than in protecting yours. (Ever notice that a dead cop is a tragedy and a dead civilian is just another day at work?) I've known people who were attacked around the corner from a police van and the police did nothing, if they even bothered to notice at all.
I was robbed at knifepoint many years ago. I gave up my wallet willingly.
I did so because I cared far more about being present for my wife and children than I cared about the fact that some assholes would enjoy the contents of my wallet.
At the time I was practicing both boxing and karate on a daily basis, so I probably had decent odds in a fight... but why bother? I can get another wallet and some more cash. I can't get my daughter a new dad.
If this makes you think I have no backbone... well I suppose we simply have different principles.
I don't know how well this works, but this is how I was told to deal with robbery.
If you have anything substantial to lose, carry two wallets, one in an unconventional place. Put about $100 (with a few ones, so it seems like a real wallet) and some expired or fake credit cards in one as a dummy wallet.
Most robbers just want to get some quick cash, usually for drugs. So they get what they want and slink away, and you only lose $100. If you're traveling in dangerous parts of the world, the police are usually corrupt and you expect such random losses in the form of shakedowns/bribes.
In my family it's common to carry a wallet, and then a hanging pouch with your valuables (serious money and stuff you don't need everyday, though I don't keep my passport there) when traveling.
So even if you're robbed, you have something left (not as good as your advice, but it sounds like it works).
