Investigating Production Mechanism of Fear of Crime in Urban Chinese Communities-Role of Social Disorder

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

A good deal of research conducted in the West has documented the complexities surrounding fear of crime (for a review of earlier literature, see Hale 1996). Studies have found that fear of crime is not proportional to the level of crime; fear of crime is more widespread than crime itself; individuals who are more fearful (Walklate, 1994; Stanko and Hobdell, 1993; Goodey 1994; Fattah and Sacco 1989:212-226) are those who have lower risk of victimization. These complexities are important to investigate. Fundamentally, what is the process or mechanism through which fear of crime is produced? This paper starts with assess the applicability of the three major theoretical models developed in the West in a previously neglected context and then focuses on the investigation of the mechanisms through which fear of crime is produced. The study conducts multi-level analyses of data from a survey of 2500 household in Tianjin, China to test the hypothesis on the role of disorder. The results find supportive evidence that disorder mediates or partially mediates the effects of important variables.