Fear of crime among Europeans, and its relationship to social, political, and order-institutional trust

Although it has been demonstrated that fear is related to various types of trust, less is known about the generalizability of relationships across contexts. Crime is a universal social and political problem that imposes harm on both individuals and the social order; as such, it can affect attitudes in a similar way across different contexts. Since the way in which people base their trust is relational, I argue that we need to treat social, political, and order-institutional types of trust separately in relation to fear of crime. Using data from 23 European countries, I test my claims about the strength and impact of the three relationships. My results reveal a clear and consistent negative relationship between fear of crime and levels of social trust, but not between fear of crime and levels of political or order-institutional trust. This relationship holds in cross-national comparisons for social trust, whereas associations with political and order-institutional trust vary across countries. These findings underscore the need for trust research to distinguish between different forms of trust when assessing how fear shapes the social and institutional foundations of democratic societies.