Risks of Criminal Victimization in Contemporary Urban China: An Application of Lifestyle/Routine Activities Theory

This study examines the influence of lifestyles/routine activities on victimization in urban China. Using survey data recently collected in the city of Tianjin, we address three research questions that are informed by Western lifestyle/routine activities theories: (1) How do lifestyles/routine activities differ across demographic groups in Tianjin? (2) To what extent and in what ways are lifestyles/routine activities related to the risks of personal victimization? (3) To what extent and in what ways does the patterning of victimization risk across demographic groups conform to that observed in the West? The results replicate some findings that have been reported for the US and other Western nations but reveal divergent patterns as well. We conclude that the lifestyle/routine activities perspectives are applicable to urban China at a general level, at least for property offenses, but that these perspectives need to be applied flexibly to reflect distinctive features of the sociocultural context. Keywords: Chinacriminal victimizationlifestyleroutine activitiesurban Notes 1. A confidence game can be defined as "a scheme involving a false representation to obtain money or any other thing of value, where the deception is accomplished through the trust placed by the victim in the character of the offender" (Ferdico Citation1992, p. 91). The specific wording of the question on "swindles" in Chinese refers to zha pian. 2. The following description of Tianjin is taken from the online version of Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianjin). 3. Following procedures in the ICVS (Nieuwbeerta, Citation2002), the Tianjin questionnaire first asks whether the respondent experienced a victimization within the past five years, and follows up with a question on whether the most recent event occurred within the past year. 4. Age is originally measured by year of birth. We categorize the variable for the regression analyses because lifestyles are not likely to vary incrementally on an annual basis. Rather, age is expected to be important to the extent that it reflects stages of life. Our categorization corresponds roughly to young adult, middle age, and elderly. 5. Respondents who do not work are assigned a score of "0" on this item. 6. This measure is based on responses to three items that ask about the primary means of transportation for going to school, for shopping, and for going to work. A respondent who identifies "bus" on any of these three items is assigned the score of "1." 7. Respondents who do not work are assigned the "almost never" response on this item. 8. The wording of the item for personal theft refers to theft in "public places." Thus, the relatively small number of responses in the categories for "at home" and "at some else's home" evidently reflects a misunderstanding of the question. 9. Two contradictory processes of "reverse" causation are plausible for the observed relationships between the indicator of self‐defense/alertness and swindles and assaults. If the experience of victimization makes people more alert, the estimated negative association is likely to underestimate the impact of this protective factor. On the other hand, if the experience of a victimization leads respondents to "downgrade" their perceptions of self‐defensive capabilities and alertness, some of the negative association may not be due to any genuine causal impact of this characteristic. 10. We have tested for the significance of these differences in coefficients across outcomes (at home vs. away from home) using the "seemingly unrelated estimation" procedure in Stata. As suggested by a simple visual inspection of the coefficients and robust standard errors in Table 5, the difference for the measure "self‐defense/alert" is not significant, whereas the differences for the measures of "wear jewelry" and "travel for work" are significant. Additional informationNotes on contributorsSteven F. Messner Steven F. Messner is Distinguished Teaching Professor of Sociology, University at Albany, SUNY. His research focuses on social organization and crime, the spatial patterning of crime, and crime and social control in China. He is a Fellow and Vice President‐Elect of the American Society of Criminology. Zhou Lu Zhou Lu (deceased) was Director of the Institute of Law and Crime Research Center at the Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences, China. He conducted a series of surveys of inmates in Tianjin prisons and published several books on crime and social control in China. Lening Zhang Lening Zhang is Associate Professor of Sociology/Criminal Justice in the Department of Behavioral Sciences, Saint Francis University. His research concentrates on comparative studies of crime and social control in China and the United States. Currently, he is engaged in the comparative study of criminal victimization using data collected from a large‐scale survey in China. Jianhong Liu Jianhong Liu is Professor of Sociology at Rhode Island College. His major research interests include international and comparative studies of crime and justice. He is currently conducting studies of crime and justice in contemporary China. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Fourteenth World Congress of Criminology, Philadelphia, PA, August 7–11, 2005. This material is based on research supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0351014. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.