Influence of environmental variables on fear of crime: Comparing self-report data with physiological measures in an experimental design

Abstract

Self-reports and questionnaires have been the preferred research methods in the criminological field of Fear of Crime (FOC) since its rise in the 1960s. Our study had two main goals: 1) to measure the physiological indicators of fear in real time, and 2) to compare these data with those obtained through self-reports, designed also to measure the emotion of fear. Methods An experimental study conducted in the course of a week during late February 2016 in Aarhus (Denmark), in which the focus was on traditional environmental variables in the field of FOC (i.e., poor lighting conditions). Results Our results support the ideas that 1) the absence of good luminosity in an open public space in an urban setting elicits physiological reactions of arousal that can be taken as indicators of experiences of fear, and 2) heart rate appears to capture aspects of the emotion of fear that are not reflected in data obtained through self-report questionnaires. Conclusions This study, introducing a pioneering approach to the study of FOC, presents great potentials in complementing traditional methods in the crime sciences. The many challenges we faced are significant and reported with the hope the subsequent literature to build on. We propose that traditional methods and new measurements could be combined to advance the research in the field by allowing researchers to more unambiguously constrain the interpretation from their data. This becomes particularly relevant in a field like FOC, that has long suffered from irreconcilable results stemming from different investigations.

Fear of Cybercrime. An Experimental Study on the Mismatches between Self-Reported and Physiological Measures in a Simulated Cyberattack Environment

“…We have no doubt that the proposed experimental research design and the consistency of its results with previous experimental experience (Castro-Toledo et al, 2017) in the use of biometrics are more than enough reason to continue exploring this path of analysis of indicators of fear of crime in real time. Despite the enormous interest that an investigation of this nature may arouse, we would like to point out not only the potential limitations of the study, some of which are quite obvious, but we also want this space to be used to expose some of the difficulties and obstacles that the research team had to face throughout the project, and which have the same or even more importance than the limitations.…”

“…Second, given the mismatches already mentioned in Castro-Toledo et al (2017) between results obtained by biometrics and those from subjective measures, and re-emphasizing the evidence on the limitations of measuring emotions through self-reports or interviews, our second hypothesis (H2) foresees that self-reported data will show no differences between the control and experimental condition.…”

“…In this experiment we have adapted the essential structure of the real-time indicator research design of Castro-Toledo et al (2017) to the analysis of the fear of a very specific cybercrime: a malware infection. And as with the previous study, the background in the literature is nonexistent, which makes the content of this experiment the first experimental study on emotional biometry applied to the analysis of fear of cybercrime, not only specific but general.…”

“…In this experimental study we tested whether, as with experiences of victimization or potential victimization in physical space (see Castro-Toledo et al, 2017), victimization experiences in cyberspace would be reflected in biometric measures traditionally associated with fear. This led us to our hypothesis (H1) that participants would show greater physiological activation by performing the same task in a simulated malware cyberattack environment as participants performing the task in cyberattack-free conditions.…”

“…In contrast, new methodologies that account for fear in real-time will open up avenues of research that are currently under-exploited, as pointed out in a recent studies on physiological measures associated with fear of crime experiences (Castro-Toledo, Perea-García, Bautista-Ortuño, & Mitkidis, 2017, Noon et al, 2019, app-based studies (Solymosi, Buil-Gil, Vozmediano & Guedes, 2019), among others (see https://fearofcrime.shinyapps.io/Fear_of_crime_research_map/)…”