Over the last decade, researchers have consistently reported that stalking is a disturbing reality for many individuals, especially youths. Cyberstalking, however, has received much less attention from the research community than stalking. Few estimates of cyberstalking victimization or cyberstalking offending have been published. The current study attempts to address these gaps by estimating lifetime prevalence of both cyberstalking victimization and offending among a sample of undergraduates from a large urban university in the Midwest. Results show that 40.8% had experienced cyberstalking victimization, with females, nonwhites, non-heterosexuals, and non-singles disproportionately experiencing cyberstalking. Approximately 4.9% of students had perpetrated cyberstalking, but there were few differences in offending across students' demographic characteristics.

Building upon Eck and Clarke's (2003) ideas for explaining crimes in which there is no face-to-face contact between victims and offenders, the authors developed an adapted lifestyle-routine activities theory. Traditional conceptions of place-based environments depend on the convergence of victims and offenders in time and physical space to explain opportunities for victimization. With their proposed cyberlifestyle-routine activities theory, the authors moved beyond this conceptualization to explain opportunities for victimization in cyberspace environments where traditional conceptions of time and space are less relevant. Cyberlifestyle-routine activities theory was tested using a sample of 974 college students on a particular type of cybervictimization-cyberstalking. The study's findings provide support for the adapted theoretical perspective. Specifically, variables measuring online exposure to risk, online proximity to motivated offenders, online guardianship, online target attractiveness, and online deviance were significant predictors of cyberstalking victimization. Implications for advancing cyberlifestyle-routine activities theory are discussed.

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Research exploring the extent and nature of fear of crime has spanned decades; it has been examined in many contexts, among varied populations, and from different theoretical perspectives. However, researchers have been slow to estimate or explain individuals' fear of online crime. The current study is among the first to address this issue by examining experiences from a random sample of undergraduate students enrolled at a large public university. In particular, we explore the links between perceived risk, online victimization, and fear of online interpersonal victimization (OIPV) and how these relationships vary by the victim-offender relationship. The effects of online exposure and demographic characteristics were also estimated. Results suggest that perceived risk of OIPV was significantly related to fear of OIPV for all types of victim-offender relationships, while previous online victimization was significant for fear of OIPV by intimate partners and friends/acquaintances only.

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