Client demand and the regulatory environment

Informed by rational choice theory (Arrow 1987; Becker 1978), this chapter considers the issue of client participation and behaviour in paid sex markets that may operate under any particular regulatory regime, Specific consideration is also given to the issue of enforcement level variability within any such regime. Rational choice theory is essentially a framework for conceptualising and, if desired, even formally modelling human behaviour. The usual form of the maximand expressed concerns individual humans seeking to maximise their individual satisfaction or utility. Rationality is a common if not dominant assumption in much work in microeconomic analysis, but also in political science and some schools of sociology. Such an approach does not claim to provide a complete fit to reality in all cases but rather it does claim to help construct models which assist reasoning, large scale policy analysis and the generation of falsifiable hypotheses for subsequent empirical social enquiry.