Fear of Crime Empathy and Violent Victimization among Police Officers: A Logistic Regression Approach

This study examined the impact of police officers’ fear of crime-related empathy on their experiences of violent victimization, with the aim of providing both theoretical insights and practical implications for occupational risk management and empathy training in police organizations. Unlike previous research that mainly focused on attitudinal outcomes such as victim orientation or job satisfaction, this study uniquely addressed violent victimization as a behavioral outcome variable. The data were collected from 316 police officers affiliated with the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, selected through purposive and convenience sampling. Fear of crime-related empathy was measured across three sub-dimensions—emotional, cognitive, and attitudinal empathy—while violent victimization was coded as a binary variable (0 = no, 1 = yes). Logistic regression analysis was conducted to test the research hypotheses. The results revealed that emotional and cognitive empathy were not significantly associated with violent victimization. In contrast, attitudinal empathy showed a positive and statistically significant effect, indicating that higher levels of attitudinal empathy were linked to an increased likelihood of experiencing violent victimization. Among the control variables, education level was negatively related to victimization, whereas longer service years were positively associated with victimization experiences. These findings suggest that empathy does not always function as a protective occupational resource; rather, specific types of empathy may increase police officers’ exposure to risk. The study highlights the necessity of reconsidering empathy from a risk management perspective within police work. Practical implications include the redesign of empathy training programs with differentiated approaches for each dimension, the implementation of tailored safety support for officers with longer service years, and the enhancement of occupational risk management competencies through continuous education and training.