Research On The Assessment And Influencing Factors Of Fear Of Crime

Fear of crime is a psychological state of concern among the public about the possibility of being victimized by crime,an emotional response based on the perception of the risk of being victimized by crime.Fear of crime is one of the quantitative ways of evaluating the severity of crime and the impact of crime,independent of the phenomenon of crime,which is subjective,quantifiable,causal,fluctuating and complex.Through the research on the measurement and evaluation of the fear of crime and its influencing factors,the content of the measurement and the evaluation methods and approaches of the fear of crime are clarified,the relevant factors that have a significant impact on the fear of crime are analyzed,and the strategy of the application of the survey on the fear of crime and its corresponding policy recommendations on crime governance is further explored.The study consists of five parts,which are the basic issues of the concept,characteristics and effects of fear of crime,the measurement of fear of crime,the evaluation of fear of crime,the empirical study of the factors affecting fear of crime,and the policy recommendations for the application of fear of crime.The first part analyzes the concept and characteristics of fear of crime and its impact on individuals and society based on literature review.The concept of fear of crime is defined from the perspective of the individual’s perceived degree of risk of becoming a victim of crime,the fearfulness of crime phenomena or crime-related signals,and the characteristics of fear of crime,such as subjectivity,quantifiability,complexity,causality and volatility,are analyzed.The effects of fear of crime are analyzed from the perspective of reflections of individuals on crime,physical and mental conditions of individuals,crime governance measures and policies,social trust,and socio-economic vitality.The second and third parts mainly study the assessment of fear of crime and study the content and means of measuring and evaluating fear of crime from the levels of individual fear of crime measurement and social fear of crime evaluation,respectively.Fear of crime measurement is the first part of the assessment of fear of crime,and the method of fear of crime measurement based on scale compilation was studied,and the measurement tool of fear of crime scale was compiled from different three-level indexes,such as behavioral risk perception,general fear level,fear frequency and specific fear level,and the reliability and validity test were conducted.The evaluation of fear of crime is carried out based on measurement,and two methods based on questionnaire data and subjective and objective data for evaluating fear of crime are proposed to solve the problem of the lack of practicality and practicability of the traditional evaluation conclusions.The fourth part empirically analyzes the influencing factors of the fear of crime,and proposes the influencing factors at the individual level,environmental level and social level based on the victimology theory,the broken window effect theory,the environmental design theory,the social control theory,the social disorganization theory and the social theory of risk,and proposes the integration mechanism based on the relationship between different factors,and obtains the following conclusions after conducting the hierarchical regression analysis: the direct victimization of crime and indirect victimization,social proximity,vulnerability,spatial disorganization,social disorganization,and social perception of risk significantly and positively affect fear of crime,factors such as security cues in environmental design and formal social control significantly and negatively affect fear of crime,vulnerability and official media coverage moderated the effect of victimization on fear of crime,and informal social control moderated the integrative mechanism of fear of crime..Based on the research on the measurement and evaluation of the fear of crime and the main influencing factors,the fifth part puts forward the policy recommendations for the application of the fear of crime,suggesting a more scientific and reasonable assessment of the effects of crime governance and promoting the optimization of crime governance measures by promoting the survey on the fear of crime in China,exploring the causes of the generation of the fear of crime,and determining reasonable evaluation standards for the fear of crime.The innovations of this study include: a systematic exposition of the basic theories and application status of fear of crime;a proposed method for measuring fear of crime based on the compilation of scales,which is empirically tested according to the actual situation in China;two ways of evaluating fear of crime based on questionnaire surveys and the combination of subjective and objective data,which innovatively introduces subjective and objective data into the process of evaluating the fear of crime,and optimizes the application of data from fear of crime surveys.The way of applying the survey data of fear of crime;expanding the breadth of empirical testing of the influencing factors of fear of crime,and enriching the localized development of evidence-based countermeasure research in criminology.