Modeling Fear of Crime and Perceived Victimization Risk: The (In)Significance of Neighborhood Integration

Abstract

The bulk of fear-of-crime research has been limited to one questionnaire item that asks respondents to assess their personal safety by answering ''how safe they feel alone in their neighborhoods at night.'' More recently, however, studies have pointed to the multidimensional nature of fear of crime and perceived risk of victimization. Following this line of inquiry, we investigate the potential impact of several variable sets on three measures of fear of crime or risk perception-the traditional risk assessment of being alone at night, a measure of worry about crime, and a more general assessment of neighborhood safety. Of particular interest are the relative effects of neighborhood integration variables on the measures of fear/risk. A comparison of the effects of neighborhood integration variables with a set of perceived neighborhood disorder, routine activities, sociodemographic characteristics, and victimization experience variables reveals that the neighborhood disorder (incivilities), income, and crime prevention measures produce the most consistently significant effects on fear of crime and perceived risk. Contrary to our expectations, neighborhood integration variables appear to be relatively unimportant.The growing body of research on fear of crime illuminates the phenomenon's complexities, ranging from conceptualizing fear as a multidimensional phenomenon (Rountree and Land 1996;Ferraro and LaGrange 1987) to recognizing the significance of a variety of antecedents including individual and neighborhood contextual levels of analysis (Ortega and Myles 1987;Rountree and Land 1996). The purpose of this research is to further explore some of these complexities by examining the effects of theoretically significant sets of predictors on one general dimension of fear and two measures that tap perceived risk of criminal victimization. To this point, much of the previous fearof-crime/perceived risk research has relied heavily on individual sociodemographic characteristics and neighborhood context as causes of fear. Our focus is more explicitly directed toward teasing out the import of residents' integration within their neighborhoods-as expressed by personal investment in the neighborhood, neighborhood affect, and social ties to neighbors-as compared to that of the individual-level sociodemographic and perceived neighborhood characteristics that have appeared so prominently in earlier studies.

Social fabric and fear of crime: Considering spatial location and time of day

“…In this paper, we posit that fear of crime differs between daytime and nighttime in part because of differences in the structural, spatial, and temporal context of the four mechanisms mentioned earlier. We now turn to discussing each of 5 One study found that more frequent interaction with neighbors is associated with less fear of crime (De Donder et al, 2012), although another study did not find this effect (Kanan and Pruitt, 2002). Given propinquity effects, it is possible that this frequency of interaction effect is due in part to the spatial distribution of alters.…”

An Exploration of Safety from Crime

“…This hierarchy indicates that one will not attain life satisfaction if the absence of threats to safety is not guaranteed. The need to feel safe is also an indicator to measure fear of crime specifically on the residents' emotions (Kanan & Pruitt, 2002). Saarinen (1984) suggests that the need to feel safe differs from one individual to another as feelings depend on experience, attitude, actions, desire, and memory, state of mind, particular situation and expectation.…”

Fear of Crime in South Korea

“…As for perceived risk of victimization, respondents were asked if they were concerned about their safety when away from home during the day and if they were concerned about their safety when away from home at night. Such measures of anxiety about crime have been previously used in studies conducted on several different continents (Kanan and Pruitt 2002;Karakus, McGarrell and Basibuyuk 2010;Kristjansson 2007), including Asia Zhong 2010).…”