Ecological Assessments of Community Disorder: Their Relationship to Fear of Crime and Theoretical Implications

Abstract

Researchers suggest that fear of crime arises from community disorder, cues in the social and physical environment that are distinct from crime itself. Three ecological methods of measuring community disorder are presented: resident perceptions reported in surveys and on‐site observations by trained raters, both aggregated to the street block level, and content analysis of crime‐ and disorder‐related newspaper articles aggregated to the neighborhood level. Each method demonstrated adequate reliability and roughly equal ability to predict subsequent fear of crime among 412 residents of 50 blocks in 50 neighborhoods in Baltimore, MD. Pearson and partial correlations (controlling for sex, race, age, and victimization) were calculated at multiple levels of analysis: individual, individual deviation from block, and community (block/neighborhood). Hierarchical linear models provided comparable results under more stringent conditions. Results linking different measure of disorder with fear, and individual and aggregated demographics with fear inform theories about fear of crime and extend research on the impact of community social and physical disorder. Implications for ecological assessment of community social and physical environments are discussed.

Fear of Crime Among Chinese Immigrants

“…The vulnerability thesis is intuitively appealing, and research findings thus far have been consistently supportive of the model (Lee &Ulmer, 2000;Perkins & Taylor, 1996;Yin, 1985). Given the empirical findings, researchers tend to simply assume that the observed associations will hold true even for samples from different socio-cultural backgrounds.…”

“…Following the contention that the perceptions of neighborhood conditions are more salient than objective conditions (Ackah, 2000;Gibson et al, 2002;Perkins & Taylor, 1996), we used perception of the seriousness of crime problem of one's neighborhood as a neighborhood-level variable. It was measured by the question, "Compared to criminal activity in other communities in Houston would you say that crime in your community is?"…”

“…The literature suggests that fear of crime is essentially a function of the person and the environment (Lee &Ulmer, 2000;Perkins & Taylor, 1996;Yin, 1985). The personal factors that have been found to influence fear of crime include age, gender, income, education level, and criminal victimization.…”

“…Environmental factors that have been extensively studied include neighborhood crime rates (Lewis & Maxfield, 1980), social ties in the community (Ross & Jang, 2000;Taylor, 2002), crime prevention strategies (Norris & Kaniasity, 1992), neighborhood attachment and satisfaction (Delisi & Regoli, 2000;Loo, 1986), and physical and social incivilities (Gibson, Zhao, Lovrich & Gaffney, 2002;LaGrange, Ferraro, & Supancic, 1992;Skogan, 1990). This line of research indicates that it is the perceptions of, rather than the objective conditions of a neighborhood that primarily affect fear of crime (Gibson et al, 2002;LaGrange et al, 1992;Perkins & Taylor, 1996). Thus, individuals on the same neighborhood block, although they encounter the same physical and social conditions, may perceive them differently.…”

Pathways to Outdoor Recreation, Physical Activity, and Delinquency Among Urban Latino Adolescents

“…Perceived incivilities were measured using a set of items validated in past ecological studies of community incivilities [49]. Respondents were asked on a three-point scale (no problem to big problem) how much of a problem in their neighborhood is/are: graffiti, trash, vacant houses/apartments, people selling drugs, people using drugs, and gangs.…”