Understanding situational fear of crime in context: a virtual reality interview approach to studying victimization avoidance strategies in nocturnal urban spaces

Most research on the behavioral dimension of fear of crime captures broad avoidance habits through surveys or retrospective interviews, leaving the in-situ risk management behaviors people deploy while actually present in a threatening space largely unobserved. This study uses Virtual Reality Retrospective Thinking Aloud (VR-RTA) to access this underexplored dimension. Sixty-one participants navigated a 3D replica of nocturnal Lausanne in scenarios developed with police officers. Analysis identified two types of in-situ avoidance strategies: anticipatory scanning and route management; reactive symbolic distancing from perceived threats, modulated by personal familiarity with the area as a dispositional factor, alongside three vulnerability dimensions (self, environment, others) reflecting the core components of Routine Activity Theory. Crucially, many routing decisions proved habit-driven rather than fear-driven (a distinction surveys cannot detect) and several behavioral adjustments operated below conscious awareness, recoverable only through VR-RTA video review of participants’ own behavior. Findings point towards a sequential process model of situational FoC: behavioral adjustment begins as routine cognitive appraisal and escalates to full fear engagement only when perceived risk crosses a threshold. They confirm and nuance existing qualitative typologies of avoidance behavior while identifying specific gaps in survey instruments for measuring the behavioral dimension of situational FoC. Based on these insights, new survey items targeting in-situ risk management behaviors are proposed to strengthen the measurement of fear of victimization events.