Dissecting Disorder Perceptions: Neighborhood Structure and the Moderating Role of Interethnic Contact and Xenophobic Attitudes

Abstract

Although urban disorder has played a central role in neighborhood research, its impact may have been overstated in studies relying on the subjective perception of survey respondents only. Research on the “perception bias”—defined as the divergence between respondents’ subjective assessments and systematic observations of disorder—has revealed the ambiguous nature of disorder and opened a door to the analysis of the social construction of this environmental cognition. Using survey and observational data from 140 small neighborhoods in two German cities, we advance this research by focusing on the moderating role of residents’ interethnic contacts and attitudes. The results show that the effects of neighborhood minority concentration on the perception bias are conditional on the residents’ interethnic contacts and xenophobic attitudes. These findings highlight the subjectivity of disorder perceptions and caution against a naive understanding of Broken Windows theory.

Pathways between objective and perceived neighborhood factors among Black breast cancer survivors

“…Moreover, there was little theoretical motivation to aggregate to some area-level that could be subject to additional sources of error such as the modifiable areal unit problem [ 59 ]. Studies that have performed aggregations have noted the high correlations between objective neighborhood disorder values within areas, similar to the spatial autocorrelation partial sill and range that we report [ 6 , 51 , 52 ]. Our methodology aligns with other studies involving observed and perceived neighborhood factors [ 13 , 60 ].…”

“…Though this is the first known path analysis of these neighborhood and socioeconomic variables among Black breast cancer survivors, related studies have yielded similar findings. Early studies of perceived neighborhood disorder by Sampson and Raudenbush (2004) and Franzini et al (2008) observed similar associations involving audited neighborhood disorder, individual socioeconomic status, and neighborhood social ties/exchanges (i.e., a construct related to social cohesion), which more recent studies have generally confirmed [ 51 – 53 ]. These previous studies also found mixed associations involving area-level African American/Black composition.…”

“…Discrepancies between studies could be due to differences in study composition and sex- and race-specific relationships between African American/Black density and perceived disorder. Black and male respondents perceive lower neighborhood disorder compared to white and female respondents within similar levels of objective neighborhood disorder, and implicit cognitive biases based on racial identity, social norms, and familiarity of residence within specific neighborhood archetypes could influence variation in findings between neighborhood racial/ethnic composition and perceived disorder [ 6 , 13 , 51 , 54 , 55 ].…”

Exploring the Impact of Measurement Error in Police Recorded Crime Rates through Sensitivity Analysis

“…Individual scores were derived from a Confirmatory Factor Analysis model using perceptions of how much of a problem noisy neighbours, teenagers hanging around, rubbish or litter, vandalism or graffiti, being attacked because of skin colour, drug dealing, people being drunk or rowdy, abandoned or burnt out cars, and people being harassed or intimidated are in the local area (CFI = 0.947, TLI = 0.930, RMSEA = 0.082). Previous studies have demonstrated the crucial role of a 'perception bias' that filters individual assessments of disorder via personal characteristics (Janssen et al, 2019), however at broad spatial scales like Local Authorities it may be a proxy measure for more objective signs of disorder.…”

Hebt ein gesteigertes Vertrauen in die Polizei das kriminalitätsbezogene Sicherheitsbefinden?

“…Erst in jüngerer Zeit nehmen empirische Studien aus Deutschland das Thema in Angriff und gelangen dabei zu unterschiedlichen Ergebnissen. Befunden, wonach Personen mit Zuwanderungsbiographie häufiger von Kriminalitätsangst betroffen sind als die einheimische Bevölkerung(Birkel et al 2019;Oberwittler & Zirnig 2016), stehen Hinweise auf eine in Migrantenkreisen geringere kriminalitätsassoziierte Verunsicherung gegenüber(Janssen et al 2019;Oberwittler et al 2017).…”